


No Game For Old Men - Book Two

by Ryk_Oakwine



Series: No Game For Old Men [2]
Category: Sekirei
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Dare to tell a new story, Embedded Images, F/F, F/M, Feels, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Multi, My alien sex slave is better than your alien sex slave, Non-Canon Relationship, Non-Canon Storyline, Psychic Abilities, Psychic Bond, Psychic Sex, Real People in Anime Situations, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-16
Updated: 2015-05-16
Packaged: 2018-09-03 10:02:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 47,272
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8708182
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ryk_Oakwine/pseuds/Ryk_Oakwine
Summary: Not all Ashikabi are young men with blank slate lives like Sahashi Minato. Some have families, careers, friends, relationships. For most, the Sekirei Plan is a disaster that wrecks the lives of Ashikabi and Sekirei alike. This is the story of Sekirei 37, Madoka and all the others who weren't the special privileged favorites of the Gods and the Canon Author.





	1. NGFOM 2.1 – Changes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author's Note: This chapter earns the M rating of this story. If you are allergic to citrus, please spare yourself the trouble and do not continue reading this story.

**No Game For Old Men**

NGFOM 2.1 – Changes

* * *

 

 

_Author's Note:  Note, some of the pics and other bonus material at the Tumblr could be considered rather "spoilery" so the author strongly recommends reading all of Book Two (that's the three chapters in this "work") before perusing the bonus material!_

_So, that warning made, once you've finished reading Book Two you might enjoy the Book Two Pictures (NSFW) and a Map of Locations from Book Two have been posted to the author's Tumblr,[oakwinefanfic.tumblr.com](http://oakwinefanfic.tumblr.com/post/119180760029/images-from-book-two-of-no-game-for-old).  _

_Also, the "No Game For Old Men" Google Map to the locations mentioned in this story is located[here](https://drive.google.com/open?id=1RMgaOhbcA43wH6DCQKPJvIOcWCM&usp=sharing).  Each book is on its own layer on the map. I hope you enjoy exploring Tokyo via Google Maps Street View as much as I did while researching for this story!  Really, you should check it out, it's a miracle of modern technology and great fun to click through the virtual Tokyo at Google Maps and see the O'Donnell's apartment building, the high school Gregory teaches at, the Omotesando street that Gregory and Madoka raced away from 86 Katsuragi on and so forth.  Even their favorite Starbucks is marked on the map so you can see it using Street View! _

o.0.O.0.o

o.0.O.0.o

_{Farsense or other Metafaculties}_  
_[Memories]  
"Internal dialogue."_

Saturday, December 21st, 2019  
Yoyogi neighborhood, Shibuya Ward, Shin Tokyo

Gregory O'Donnell and his Sekirei, number 37 Madoka, walked away from the Yoyogi Post Office, the easiest Post Office to get to from the O'Donnell's apartment in west Shin Tokyo, and Gregory was speaking to the blonde girl in a low voice. "So, that's how you use a card to withdraw cash at an ATM. Here in Japan most ATM's are at post-offices and there are post-offices seemingly every ten meters or so, so you should be able to find easy access to funds at any time. It looks like the daily limit on your ATM withdrawals is ¥500,000, which is the normal limit for about every checking account card at any bank in Japan."

He slowed his pace as they approached the parking garage where his orange Jeep was parked. "The ¥500,000 a day thing always seemed kind of insane to me, as an American. I believe our bankcards in the States have a $500US per day limit, which is about ¥50,000. So, 10% as much as the ATM's here allow, but that's just the way it is in Japan. A lot more businesses here are cash-only so cash is more easily available than in the States. Japanese bank customers wouldn't put up with a low limit like U.S. banks typically have on their ATMs."

Madoka nodded, her blonde hair swirling about. "And the paper yen I get from the machine, the cash, can be used to buy goods. I do not know why, Gregory-kun, but for some reason I had not thought of money and cash to be the same thing."

Gregory laughed as they approached the Jeep. He'd told Madoka they needed to avoid talking about anything important in the Jeep or in the apartment, since MBI had already demonstrated how easily they could tap into any electronics Gregory owned, so they loitered in the parking garage before driving back home.

He responded to the hurt look Madoka gave him. "Hey, I'm not laughing at you, I'm laughing because of how crazy the situation is. I can't imagine the millions of everyday ideas and concepts that you have a completely different viewpoint on, due to the way MBI raised all of you. It's really kind of mind boggling."

Madoka expression did not change much, but Gregory could tell it was a playful scowl now. He continued, "I don't think of using cash much, anymore. Almost everything I buy I can use my card. However, there are many cash-only businesses here in Shin Tokyo, so it's a good idea to carry cash. It's just something I've gotten out of the habit of doing."

Gregory gestured at the handbag Madoka was clutching tightly, indicating the stack of five-hundred ¥1,000 notes contained within. "The ¥500,000 we just got from that ATM, that's about $5,000US. That's quite a bit of money, Mado-chan, and you can get that every single day. By comparison, if you combined my salary at the school plus the generous housing allowance they grant me it comes to about ¥375,000 a month. So, what you've got in your purse there is a lot more than I earn in a whole month at a professional job."

Madoka blinked then asked, "But you like your job so you do not have to be paid so much to do it, right?"

It was Gregory's turn to blink in astonishment. "That's an… interesting view of how jobs and pay works, and, you know, it should probably be more like that. But it's not, not really. I enjoy my work but that's simply my good luck that it ended up that way. I assure you, the teachers at Tokyo Metro High who have to drag themselves into the school every day and who can't stand being around kids get paid the same I do."

Madoka thought about that for a moment, then she asked, "And I can get that much every day out of the ATM things? Is that normal?"

"Yep. Well, like I said, it's normal that Japanese ATM's allow up to that much every day in withdrawals. It's _not_ normal for someone to have an unlimited MBI Platinum Card. MBI told you that the cards were so you and your Ashikabi could focus on the 'game', so I'm guessing they meant unlimited when they said unlimited. In addition to pulling out that much cash every day we can use the card to buy stuff at businesses which take cards."

He looked down to meet the eyes of his barely-five-foot-tall Sekirei, "I do wonder how much you could actually ring up every day before MBI starts squealing about it. From now on, every single day, you need to go to one of the post-offices and pull out the max, the ¥500,000 that's allowed, from one of the ATMs and hide it. The time might come when we really need that money, so for now, just pull out the max and stash it at the apartment. After Christmas, we'll see about getting a place for you to live and I'm going to do some planning on how we can best use this resource."

Gregory did not notice the unhappy look on Madoka's face at the mention of getting _her_ a place to live.

o.0.O.0.o

o.0.O.0.o

Sunday, December 22nd, 2019

"Looks like the London Jaguars are going to the AFC Championship game." Gregory O'Donnell said from the living room couch, to no one in particular.

His daughter Mishi, sitting at the dining table with her boyfriend, Yashiro Tomo, looked up from her lunch towards where her father was reading the sports news on his tablet. Looking to her left, she met her blonde-haired roomie's eyes. Madoka, a blank look of incomprehension on her gorgeous face, was no help, so Mishi looked to her right where Tomo was reading something on his phone. Tomo shrugged at Mishi but Mishi was not letting him get away with that. She glared at her boyfriend and gestured towards where her dad was sitting with her chin.

Tomo got the point; he was the guy, it was something about sports, so he had to respond.

"Ah, yeah, so it seems, Mr. Gregory. That's great. Right?" Tomo was floundering, he obviously had no idea what the conversation was even about. Mishi giggled at Tomo's predicament.

Gregory, still reading, just smirked and let Tomo twist in the wind for a moment. He was not sure what Tomo had done to upset Mishi last week but he was aware enough to know Tomo was in the doghouse and he figured he could do his part to make the young man suffer. And give Tomo a chance to score some positive points, if he was up to it.

"Sure, I guess it is, Tomo. I'm more a New England Patriots fan but I think it's a good thing the league is having some success with their UK experiment. And besides, don't you think the Jaguars revolutionary 2-5 defense will match up well against the Texans neo-run-and-shoot offense?"

Tomo turned to look at Mishi, his eyes wide, shrugging at her with an insistent look on his face for her to bail him out.

Mishi just looked at him, then very deliberately turned to Madoka and asked, "So, Mado, how are those new shoes working out for you? Did they end up fitting right?"

Tomo shot her a look of hurt betrayal then rallied with a reply to Gregory, "Ah, yes sir! I think they will eh… match up just perfectly. Yes."

Gregory chuckled and looked over at the three teens, "Yes, just so, Tomo. On the small chance you're still dating my daughter next Sunday, maybe you could come over and watch the game with us."

Mishi and Madoka both giggled at this and Tomo gamely replied, "I would be glad to, Mr. Gregory, thank you."

Mishi gave her boyfriend a small smile for his putting up with their teasing and Gregory returned to reading his tablet. There, he had done his part in giving Tomo a chance to score points and the kid rallied to do so. Gregory liked Tomo, even though the young man had passed on taking Gregory's senior English course in order to focus on more mathematics in this, his Senior year. Gregory forgave the snub since he knew Tomo was aiming for an engineering school after graduation in March.

He hoped Tomo attended a local university, otherwise he would be dealing with Mishi trying to sustain a long distance relationship and that was not something Gregory was looking forward to. While Gregory was not wild about the fact that Mishi and Tomo were having sex, he would rather deal with that than try to manage a daughter being distracted from her own senior year in high school by worrying about a boyfriend who was away at college.

Gregory tried to concentrate on reading the NFL news on his tablet and shake the subject of his daughter's love life out of his head. He already had enough grey hairs and _that_ subject was guaranteed to give him more. It was so much easier when his son Mark had been sixteen. First, by the time Mark was that age he was living with Karen's parents in New Hampshire so he could keep attending school there while Gregory, Karen, and Mishi moved to Japan. Second, all Gregory had to do was make sure the pharmacist in town knew to quietly charge Gregory's credit card on file for any condoms Mark needed. Simple! All Gregory had to worry about was making sure the boy had all the free condoms he wanted, no matter what the Pope said about birth control.

Until the Pope volunteered to personally adopt all unplanned babies, Gregory was counting on latex to save him from premature grandfatherhood.

Raising the daughter was a completely different ballgame. Once Gregory got the word from his wife, Karen, that Mishi was likely sexually active with her boyfriend, Gregory had insisted that Tomo at least have the balls to assure Gregory that Tomo had access to all the latex _he_ might need. Gregory wondered if Tomo had ever confided to Mishi that her father had cornered him at school under the pretense of a teacher-student conference and interrogated him about condoms.

Gregory sighed and tried, _again_ , to focus on reading the sports page.

Mishi's conversation with Madoka distracted him further. "Mado, thank you for going with us to Mass this morning. You looked awesome in that dress! I'm so jealous; it never looked so good on me, that's for sure."

"Thank you, Mishi, for letting me borrow it, it was very nice. I do not think I have ever worn a dress before."

The look Madoka received from Mishi _and_ Tomo let her know she had said something wrong. She looked back and forth between her tablemates, unsure how to retract the obviously ill placed comment.

"I'm sure," Gregory said, from the living room, "she meant she hadn't worn a dress like that one, not that she hadn't worn a dress at all before."

Madoka nodded, "Yes, just so."

Mishi, obviously not buying into the explanation but also obviously not willing to press the issue, returned to watching Tomo toying with his phone.

Madoka caught Gregory's eye and smiled at him in appreciation for the save.

When Gregory's wife walked through the living room and told Gregory she was going to the store, he was focused on his tablet instead of looking at Madoka at the dining table, though it was a close thing.

o.0.O.0.o

o.0.O.0.o

Gregory walked down the short hallway towards the master bedroom, noticing the bedroom door across the hall from the master was cracked open with the light on in the bedroom. He knew his daughter was watching the TV in the living room with her boyfriend, so he glanced through the six-inch open gap curiously. He was stopped in his tracks by what he saw.

Madoka, _"My Sekirei,"_ the thought came to him very strongly, was facing the large mirror on the back of the dresser, in front of the bedroom's one window, and was obviously changing clothes. At the very moment Gregory glanced through the open doorway, she was pulling the white t-shirt she had been wearing up and over her head.

Gregory's eyes grew wide as Madoka's bare breasts bounced free of the t-shirt. With her arms extended over her head, gripping the t-shirt, he had a completely unobstructed view of her magnificent breasts for just a second. A very long second, in which the view of the swell of pale skin and the small, pert, light-pink, nipples, was burned into his mind.

Too quickly, the t-shirt was off and tossed aside and then Gregory was looking right into Madoka's blue eyes in the dresser mirror. Gregory felt his face burning as he realized the pretty blonde was completely aware of him standing there in the hall and ogling her naked upper body. Just as Gregory turned and retreated to his own bedroom, he saw Madoka looking with sleepy, half-lidded, eyes into the mirror and then she actually _winked_ at him.

" _Oh, man, I am way too old for this. But...oh my god, those were awesome…"_

o.0.O.0.o

o.0.O.0.o

Madoka lay on her back on Mishi's big comfy bed, wearing the tank top and shorts she liked to sleep in, with one leg pulled up and the other flat out and under the sheet, staring at the ceiling. She barely noticed Mishi moving around the room, getting her own sleeping clothes on.

She was trying to figure out why she had so deliberately flashed Gregory this evening. Each step along the way had seemed innocent enough, but in retrospect, she knew she had left the door open on purpose, knew she stood right where she stood on purpose, pulled the shirt over her head as soon as she sensed her Ashikabi lingering in the hallway.

She knew she had deliberately pulled the shirt against her chest so her boobs would bounce nicely when she pulled the shirt over her head.

The question was… _why_? Yes, Gregory was her Ashikabi now, but not because he was her first choice or even much of a choice at all. And yes, the kiss that finally connected the two of them was… well, it was something way beyond any of the kisses she'd experienced with Toyotama-onee-sama.

So her Ashikabi knew how to kiss, so what? He _should_ ; he was older than dirt and was married as well. Of course he knew how to kiss! But that's no excuse for flashing him!

The moment she had met his eyes in the mirror she could see the effect she'd had on him. He was stunned speechless, to her great amusement. In addition to being amused, she knew his very impressed expression had _made her feel good_. She realized she had _liked_ what his appreciation and admiration felt like. Why? She certainly had never thought about teasing or flirting with the man before. In fact, she had kept her distance as best she could. She had put up with his glances with good grace but certainly had never courted them. She had found it a bit creepy even, though he _had_ made every effort to be subtle with his ogling. But then today she deliberately bounced her boobs at him!

Why?

It had to be the bond, there was no other explanation. And if that was the case then she was even more grateful that she had avoided being captured by Katsuragi to be winged by Higa. What horrors being bonded to a man like that would inflict were beyond her imagination, but that did not stop her from knowing they would have been horrors.

She wondered what the bond was doing to her, other than making her like flashing her boobs at her Ashikabi.

Three days had passed since Gregory had kissed her, _"So very, very, well,"_ she could not help but think, and thereby saved her from a fate worse than death. At first she was upset about the loss of her chances to get a better Ashikabi and had been unhappy about fate forcing her to be bonded to such an older, boring, sort of person as Gregory O'Donnell.

Now she was less sure about how she felt.

"Mado! Are you asleep with your eyes open or something?" Mishi's voice snapped Madoka out of her reverie.

"What, Mishi? I am sorry, perhaps I did nod off. What did you ask?" Madoka made the effort to put her least confrontational tone into the question. For some reason she and Mishi had been getting on each other's nerves for the last few days, and Madoka could not figure out why. It just seemed that her American friend had been very pushy and nosey all weekend. She had been noticing many of Mishi's irritating traits over the last few days. _"Really, just as well I avoided being bonded to her for life. I had no idea how irritating she could be!"_

"I was asking," Mishi replied, as she climbed into bed and started hogging all of the covers, "if you thought Tomo had suffered enough for his being so rude to me when we went shopping last week. He really was minding himself this weekend, he was about as nice as he could be and paid all of his attention to me even when you were with us and that's not easy!"

The grin on the face of the other girl made Madoka want to turn over and ignore her. Another conversation about Tomo, with Mishi pointing out that he had been ignoring Madoka as though she was not even there all weekend. Why did Mishi think it was so important to remind Madoka that Mishi's boyfriend actually paid attention to _Mishi_ , as he was supposed to? Madoka resisted the temptation to shut out her only female friend and tried to at least pretend to be interested in what Mishi so obviously wanted to talk about.

"Tomo seemed to genuinely be sorry for his behavior on the shopping trip, Mishi. And he certainly was being very kind and attentive to you this weekend." Madoka suppressed a sigh and turned to look the sixteen-year-old American girl. "I think that if you think he should be forgiven, then he should be forgiven."

Mishi pursed her lips, her face screwing up into an expression of intense thought. It was, Madoka had to admit, completely cute. Mishi got away with murder due to being so cute, at least where her father and boyfriend were concerned; they were both completely wrapped around the girl's finger. "Maybe so, Mado. But maybe he's just horny and pretending to be the good boyfriend just so he can get his dick wet, hmm?"

This time Madoka's blush was not nearly as intense as was usual from Mishi's blunt words. _This_ time Madoka caught the look on Mishi's face, where Mishi shifted her eyes to look at Madoka and see how the blonde girl was reacting to the blatantly sexual comment. Madoka realized something at that moment. _"She is doing it on purpose! Grrrr, that is so wrong!"_

Mishi laughed at the growing expression of outrage on Madoka's idol-like-face. "Oh my god Mado, you're just too easy to wind up. I love you, you know that? We've really got to get you past the blushing virgin thing, though. It's cute, but you're going to end up fainting like Hinata in 'Naruto' the first time you get a real kiss! She even fainted when Naruto kissed her at their wedding. It was so sweet!"

"Hn," was all Madoka could reply, since she was biting her own tongue to keep from telling Mishi just exactly how well her first real kiss with a man had gone and exactly who it was who had kissed her, _"So well, so thoroughly, so perfectly,"_.

No, better to let her friend enjoy her teasing. As Mishi settled into sleep in her ( _argh!)_ irritatingly clingy way, Madoka's thoughts returned to her Ashikabi, to what it felt like to kiss him. A subject she had been dwelling on every day and every night since it had happened.

o.0.O.0.o

o.0.O.0.o

Monday evening found the O'Donnell's and their houseguest enjoying Chinese take-out that Karen had picked up on the way home from her office at the Red Cross.

They got take-out twice a week usually, since it saved so much time and effort from preparing dinner and cleaning up afterwards. And it was almost as cheap to feed the three of them, or four of them now, with take-out than it cost to buy all the ingredients and prepare a meal from scratch. Besides, none of them were going to cook Chinese in the sort of variety and in the quality available at her favorite Chinese place. Karen could bring home enough to fill herself, Greg, Mishi, and Madoka, for less than ¥4,000.

"You should try the Mandarin Beef, Mado," Greg told their houseguest as they all filled their plates from the half dozen paper boxes on the kitchen counter. "Oh, and the Sweet and Sour Chicken. It's great, especially with the sauce."

Karen noticed that Madoka smiled up at Gregory from where she stood next to him at the kitchen counter, "I will do so. I do not think I have ever had Mandarin Beef, thank you for the suggestion, Gregory."

Karen sat at the table with her plate and her glass of tea, a scowl on her face. She asked, as Gregory was taking his seat, "Greg, how did the first day of finals go?"

"Good, good. Tomorrow is the last day of the semester, all the finals for the autumn semester will be done, and then it's off work until the 6th of January." Gregory sat at the table next to Karen then reached over and picked a piece of Tsung Pao Beef from her plate to sample.

Karen snarled, "Damnit Greg, I hate it when you do that. You know you _could_ get your own if you had wanted some, right?"

Gregory held up his hands in mock surrender, "Sorry, sorry. I guess you failed 'sharing' in kindergarten, didn't you, dear?"

Karen did not reply, just glared at her husband and stabbed a piece of cabbage fiercely, ignoring Mishi's giggle at her father's quip. As she chewed the slice of cabbage, Karen glanced sideways at Madoka, watching for any sign the blonde girl was laughing too.

There was no laughter, the girl's face was completely neutral. Suspiciously so. Regardless, Karen did not like the way the young, beautiful, sexy, young, blonde, gorgeous, young, curvy, young, girl was looking at Greg. Karen angrily stood from the table, knocking the chair over behind her from the abruptness. "You know what, I'm not hungry. Just have all of it."

o.0.O.0.o

Gregory chewed his Mandarin Beef silently after Karen had stormed off to the bedroom, leaving the three at the table in an awkward stillness.

Mishi spoke up first, "Dad?"

Gregory glanced over at his sixteen-year-old daughter and shrugged. "I don't know, sweetie. Please put her plate in the microwave; maybe she'll eat later."

Mishi did so then resumed eating her own Sweet and Sour Pork without any more discussion. Gregory spotted an unusually intense expression on Madoka's face, an expression Gregory did not identify right off. And quickly enough the blonde girl was looking down at her plate, expertly moving rice from the plate to her mouth with her chopsticks.

It was later in the evening before Gregory recognized the look on Madoka's finely featured face, but… why she would be _protective_ of _him_? He was positive she had been restraining herself from jumping up and putting herself between him and Karen.

Gregory hoped that was not going to become a problem. If quiet and reserved Madoka suddenly found not only the courage to get into Karen's face but also thought it was necessary, it would not end well at all for anyone.

o.0.O.0.o

o.0.O.0.o

Tuesday, 24 December, 2019  
Shibuya Ward, Shin Tokyo

Tuesday afternoon found Gregory leaving work late, which was predictable given that the previous two days had been filled with semester exams and that tomorrow, Christmas, marked the start of the winter break for the schools in Shin Tokyo. He'd stayed until he had wrapped up the last of his work so that he could enjoy his time off over the holidays.

Sunset was still a bit off, but there were long shadows being cast by the late afternoon sun through the school's collection of ume trees. The line of plum trees across the back of the parking lot were bare of leaf or blossom this time of year but by spring they would bloom so beautifully that people from all around Shibuya Ward knew of Tokyo Metro High and its ume trees. The trees brought some esteem to the busy and crowded Ward and the residents were proud of them. And though Gregory preferred winter to the spring and summer, he was far from immune to the charms of the springtime ume blossoms or the more famous sakura flowering.

Gregory walked past the plum trees, discarding thoughts of spring and beautiful flowers, as he focused his thoughts on his domestic troubles. His wife, Karen, had been difficult and downright surly last night. Regrettably, he had no reason to believe her attitude would improve any time soon, Christmas tomorrow or no. He was not even sure what was wrong, though he also could not say what was right, if he was pressed.

He and Karen had been married for twenty years. They had raised a son, Mark, who was now twenty and in college, and who had chosen to remain in the States with Karen's parents when he was fifteen and Gregory and Karen had told him they intended to move to Japan. They had their sixteen-year-old daughter, Michelle, or Mishi, who they both loved very much and probably spoiled a bit. Especially Gregory, who certainly doted on the girl.

They had their separate careers, in which they were both successful. Gregory was very content with his position at the school as well as with the respect he had from his superiors. Karen had no complaints about the Red Cross office here in Shin Tokyo. She made more money than Gregory did and he knew she was an appreciated member of their executive team. He assumed Karen was happy about her job, though it had been quite some time since he had asked her about it.

It had been some time since he had asked her much of anything, now that he considered it. They lived together, raised their daughter, and worked at their jobs. They managed to be polite and even friendly to each other, usually. But that was about it. She had her pastimes and he had his. She certainly didn't want to spend evenings playing World of Guildwars III with him. And he had no interest in spending evenings watching the sort of melodrama television she liked.

He could not remember the last time they had sex. Six months ago? It certainly had not been more than twice in the last year.

Gregory supposed he still loved Karen, but it was not the passionate love of twenty years ago. It was not even the fond, appreciative, love of five years ago when she had supported his desire to move to Japan.

Gregory had never considered separating from Karen, in spite of the distance that existed between them. Why separate? They got along and they were able to live together. That was no easy thing, truth be known. Gregory understood and was able to tolerate Karen's prickly nature and she knew and was able to tolerate his quirks as well. That counted for a lot. Besides, he was forty years old. What would he be trying to prove, what would he be looking for, if he and Karen separated? Besides, divorce was out of the question. They might be casual Catholics but they _were_ still Catholic.

Engrossed in his troubled thoughts, Gregory slowly crossed the parking lot and approached his orange Jeep Wrangler, near the fence of the school's parking lot. He was so inwardly focused that he did not at first notice the beautiful blonde girl sitting on the hood of his Jeep, her shapely legs dangling over the fender, her black-boot-covered feet tapping against the chrome bumper.

He looked up with a start when she called out, "Gregory-kun! Let us go get coffee!"

Gregory face broke into a smile at the sight of his gorgeous little Sekirei and he waved at her, worry and trouble clearing away from his face and his thoughts straightaway.

"Sure, that sounds good, Mado-chan!"

o.0.O.0.o

o.0.O.0.o

Gregory had chosen a Starbucks that was not directly "on the way" between Tokyo Metro High and the O'Donnell apartment, one in the trendy Harajuku district of Shibuya Ward, not even one hundred meters away as the crow flies from the Omotesandō avenue, Tokyo's Champs-Élysées. To say the Harajuku neighborhood of Shibuya Ward was trendy and swank was to engage in immense understatement.

The weather was reasonably pleasant and it had been a sunny afternoon, so Madoka suggested that they sit outside at one of the small, iron, patio tables that lined the front of the Starbucks. It was cool, but there was little in the way of a breeze, and sitting in the late sun with jackets on it was comfortable enough. This meant Gregory could indulge himself with a cigarette as well, while they were talking, which she knew he would appreciate.

"You're sure you aren't cold, Mado-chan? We can sit inside if you want." Gregory sipped his pumpkin spice latte carefully.

"I am fine, Gregory-kun, thank you. I have noticed that you enjoy being outside, with the cold air. Why is that?" Madoka tasted her peppermint mocha latte, purchased at Gregory's recommendation. Her eyebrows lifted upwards from her pleased surprise at how delicious the hot beverage was.

"Probably because the cold reminds me of home. New Hampshire is quite a bit colder than Shin Tokyo; this time of year back home in Manchester it is 22 degrees at night and it might only get up to 38 during the day. That's, ah… a low of -5 C and a high of… 3 C, I think." Gregory swirled his pumpkin spice latte in its cup, watching Madoka as she sipped carefully at her own drink. "Here in Shin Tokyo it only gets down to 38 degrees, or 3 C, at night and during the day it's around 53 degrees, or 12 C."

He grimaced then continued, "12 C might feel like a winter day to someone who has lived in Shin Tokyo for their whole life but to me it feels like the middle of April. So I'll take the cold air where I can."

Madoka laughed softly and shook her head, bemused. "I was going to say 17 and 36 sounds like a very _hot_ day. But the United States uses a different measuring system than we use, Fahrenheit, right? I am not very familiar with it even though I studied American English. It sounds complicated."

Gregory shrugged, turning his attention to the people walking past the Starbucks along the narrow cobblestone alley-backstreet the coffee shop fronted. "I'll tell you, Mado-chan, temperature measurement is probably the one thing I've had the most difficulty adjusting to, moving from the States rather 'unique' measurement standards to the metric system, here. It didn't take long before I was thinking in terms of kilometers instead of miles, liters instead of gallons. Even meters instead of feet was easy to adapt to. But for some reason saying '35 degrees' doesn't have the same impact to me that '95 degrees' has. Even after five years living here, summer days of 35 C just don't feel like summer days of 95. To be clear, the system Japan uses is probably better; it's just not what I grew up with."

Watching Gregory as he spoke, Madoka took another sip of her hot drink. She loved the flavor and made a point to remember what Gregory had ordered for her. She looked around at the sparsely trafficked foot-traffic-only alley-backstreet and at the otherwise empty Starbucks patio, then asked, "So, Gregory-kun, do you think it is safe to talk about, you know, the other stuff, here?"

He nodded. "Yeah, it should be. I left my phone in the Jeep on purpose, so neither of us is carrying anything they can easily monitor. If they can spy on a conversation in an outdoor café that we picked on the spur of the moment then they have enough intelligence assets in place that it simply isn't reasonable that we'd _ever_ avoid them. So we'll not worry about whether that's the case or not. There is a point of diminishing returns on paranoia; I hope to keep us on the smart side of that point, but if you ever wonder if something we're doing is effective, or if it seems overly cautious, let me know. I need a sanity check on my thought processes as much as anyone else does."

Madoka replied, "I do not know anything about any of this though. If you think something is necessary then I am sure it is, Gregory-kun."

Gregory took another sip of coffee then shook his head, "No, no, you shouldn't think like that, Mado-chan. You're smart _and_ you have a completely different viewpoint than I do, so there's value in that. Just because I know more about certain things doesn't mean your opinion or guesses or instincts are invalid or worse than mine are. If you have a question or if you think something isn't a good idea, or if you have an idea you want to share, you make sure to speak up, okay? I might not always agree but I promise I will always listen."

Madoka gave Gregory a happy smile at this. Gregory wasted a half second wondering why Madoka thought she should be seen but not heard, then reminded himself that she was raised in Japan and from hints he'd gotten she'd been raised with an even more skewed, traditionalist, view of women than was common. And given how poorly women were viewed, in attitude if not in deed, by typical Japanese males, that was saying something.

"Tell me more about the MBI Sekirei Labs, Mado-chan. Your earliest memories are there? Even as a small child you were in a group dormitory with other Sekirei? You had no mother or father in your life, even then?"

Madoka shook her head, "No, no parents. I never met another Sekirei who said they had been raised by any kind of parent. I remember just the crèche when we were very small, and then we were moved to the dorms when we were, as best that I can guess, the same as a five year old child. To the best of our ability to tell, the story of us being found as embryos and fetuses in suspension tanks in our ship on Kamakura Island is the truth. At least, none of us ever found any suspicious memories of being kidnapped from our human families or something like that, and it did get spoken of between the Sekirei, when we felt we had some privacy away from the eyes and ears of the Administrators."

Gregory had taken the black wire-bound Notebook (as Madoka was already thinking of it, The Notebook, capital letters and all) out of his jacket pocket and was making notes. "And you don't have any idea of how many years you were there? The earliest you could have been born would be, what… 2000? Hiroto Minaka and his 'minions' discovered the ship in 1999, they found 107 embryos and one fully grown adult Sekirei, right?"

"Yes, the adult one was number 01. She was the one responsible for the rest of us, according to the stories Yosu and I heard when we were little. I think… I think it was 02 Matsu who told us and the other little ones in Group 11 the story first. I do not remember exactly, it _was_ a long time ago. When we were small and if there was something that scared us we would hope 01 would come save us from the MBI people." Madoka looked off into the distance, continuing, "I do not know what it is like for children like Mishi but we spent a lot of our time very scared. I remember being terrified almost all of the time when I was small. There were scary scientists who did experiments on us and made us take off our clothes all the time and they would drag a Sekirei out of the dorms kicking and screaming for tests if the Sekirei tried to resist. Looking back from my perspective today I realize they were probably not _deliberately_ trying to scare us but they also made no effort to make us feel safe or secure. If they wanted to draw blood for tests they just came in and took blood from us. There were no words of comfort or explanations to make us understand why it was needed. I do not think the MBI people hated us, I think they just did not care about us as people. We were treated like animals more than people, when I consider it now. Maybe that made it easier for them. I do not know."

Gregory looked at Madoka's pensive expression and frowned. He said, "I really can't imagine what that was like. I doubt very many of your fellow Sekirei came out of such an upbringing with what we would call a healthy mind. No, I'm not saying you are all crazy," _You are not saying we are all sane, either,_ the thought came to her, "It's just… it takes a certain amount of care and nurturing to raise a child to be a healthy, well adjusted, adult. And it sounds like there wasn't much effort made in doing that with the Sekirei."

Madoka gave Gregory a small smile and nodded agreement. "There was _no_ nurturing that I ever recognized as such. Maybe Group 11 was the group that received no care and other Groups did? I do not know. But we _were_ scared a lot, me and Yosu-chan. And some of the other girls, like Katsuragi, they were scared a lot too. They came and went, so you never knew how long someone would be in Group 11. Katsuragi was with us for what was probably a month when we were all the size of the children in the 3rd grade photos you showed me."

"Yeah, about eight or nine years old. I'm glad that school yearbook I gave you is helping. Even if you aren't _sure_ how old you were you at various times in your youth, you can at least guess at it based on what your peers looked like compared to the kids in the school yearbooks."

Madoka nodded. "Yes, that has turned out to be a very good idea, Gregory-kun, thank you. I have now mostly associated ages with my different memories of being a child. It is very helpful. I had no realization how disorienting it was not having any idea how old I was, growing up."

"I doubt that was by accident," Gregory mumbled, as he continued making notes. He spoke up, asking, "Were there other things that scared you and your friends? Or was it just being taken away?"

"Yes there were many things we were afraid of, all of the time. Not only the Researchers and Administrators, though they were scary enough. There were also the older Sekirei, the First Five, we called them. Sekirei 02 through 05, but never 01 in spite of the name 'First Five'. They were scarier than the MBI staff in some ways. They had the freedom to come and go from our dorms, none of us knew where they slept or where they spent the rest of their time, but they definitely had more freedom than we did."

Madoka thought back to her childhood as best she could, her eyes growing distant and her coffee forgotten in her hand. "We would see 02 Matsu working with the Researchers, taking notes or helping them with their experiments. She was one we were all scared of, even though she would sometimes tell us things no one else would share with us, like the story of where we came from, the spaceship, and Kamakura Island. Then there was 04 Karasuba, the black crow, everyone was scared of her, even the bigger girls like 14 Chiyo, who were never scared of the Researchers, or at least pretended to not be scared of them." Madoka visibly shuddered. "If 04 was around, either in the labs we were being tested in or around the Group 11 dorms, everyone kept quiet and made sure to not raise a fuss about anything at all."

Madoka tried to get a grip on herself, the remnants of old childhood fears having sent gooseflesh all over her arms. She continued, "Any time we saw 05 Mutsu he was this towering giant male and just being male and Sekirei made him very strange, and so made him unknown and unpredictable. And he would stare at us, all silent and foreboding. He scowled at us like we offended him somehow, just by being there. And since he was the only grown male Sekirei we ever saw and he was, like, over two meters tall, yes, we were scared of him. We told scary stories about all of them, really. Even 03, who was nice a lot of the time and acted like everyone's onee-san. But everyone in Group 11 knew that she would sell you out to the Administrators if you trusted her with too much, because she was always trying to impress the Professor. Only 10 Uzume ever really trusted her. Well, 10 Uzume and 67 Riko."

Madoka's eyes focused on her Ashikabi, who was carefully making notes still. "But 67 Riko was only in Group 11 after at least half of us had been through our Puberty Adjustments, so probably 4 years total? Maybe 3? It is very hard to guess at the passage of time during those years. But 67 Riko was an odd, anti-social, Sekirei who no one got along with, so her friendship with 03 was written off as just another one of her quirks. No one ever had any sort of relationships with the other First Five."

"None of you ever saw this 01 Sekirei, Mado-chan? Are you sure she was real, then?"

Madoka thought about the question while sipping her coffee. After a minute she replied, "I guess we could not be _sure_ , since none of us in Group 11 ever actually saw her. But we all knew she was real even when we were very young, when we were toddlers in the crèche, my earliest memories. And it would be very odd for numbering to start at 02, yes?"

Gregory laughed, "Well, that's true. You said your earliest memories were when you were a toddler, in the crèche? The, ah, nursery? So you would be about, what, 3?"

"Yes, in the crèche we were all about the same size as three year old children, so that's my best guess. Then my next memories were at about five years old, in the Group 11 dorms. So there was some Adjustment between us being toddlers in the crèche and then being young children in the new Group 11 dorms."

Gregory's ink pen was furiously scratching in The Notebook and he was muttering in English. Madoka smiled at how interested Gregory was in these seemingly irrelevant details of her life. It was actually a good feeling that her Ashikabi was so interested in her; she had been raised to expect males to be interested in themselves and that she should focus on them instead of on her own life. Gregory was not what she had been raised to expect in an Ashikabi, in many ways.

Without looking up, he asked, "Were there any clues about what happened to 01?"

Madoka shook her head. "No. She was just not there. And any questions we asked were firmly discouraged. I had the feeling that the First Five knew where she was, but… I never had the courage to ask any of them. The Group 11 girls all had different ideas about her though. Some of us believed that she had been captured by MBI and was being held prisoner so that she could not save us from the Researchers. Others insisted she had been killed or even that she was secretly working with MBI."

Gregory looked up and met her eyes across the patio table. "What do you believe, Mado-chan?"

She looked down at her hands, her hair falling forward and hiding her eyes from Gregory's view. She answered, in a low voice, "I believed she was trying to get free from MBI, so she could find us, and save us. I still do. But, you know, it is getting to the time when maybe some of us cannot be saved anymore. Some, like 08 and 07 cannot be saved now. And some like 86 Katsuragi and Toyotama-onee-sama, it might be too late for them now too."

o.0.O.0.o

o.0.O.0.o

The last light of the day quickly disappearing, Gregory finished making a note to follow up about 07 and 08, as well as the honorific applied to Toyotama's name. His thoughts centered on this Sekirei 01 who no one ever knew or saw. Gregory wondered at how universal it was for people, Terran Human or Sekirei, to have faith in an unseen, absent, savior, who they believed would return some day and save them from torment.

He also wondered what the real story behind Sekirei 01 was. It was entirely likely, even probable, that this fully adult, likely-entirely-trained in the use of her Sekirei powers, protector and custodian of the 107 unborn Sekirei, would have been quickly and quietly eliminated by anyone who had their own plans for the Sekirei ship and its living cargo.

It surely was damn well unlikely a lunatic like Hiroto Minaka (or his "minions") could convince the protector Sekirei to cooperate with his lunatic plans.

His own Sekirei was already visibly upset due to the subject so it was time to change it. He would come back to the question of 01, the First Five Sekirei, and details of Group 11 at another time.

"Well, Mado-chan, now that you are out and about in the city, free from MBI at least somewhat, you get to do new things. The first new thing on the list is that tomorrow is Christmas and that means Mishi and I got you a Christmas present. You said they celebrated no such holidays in the dorms, so Merry Christmas. We also figured it was better to give it to you today than tomorrow, so Karen doesn't get all bent out of shape about it."

"Why would she do that, Gregory-kun?"

Gregory shook his head as he stood up from the café table and threw away his empty coffee cup, "Who knows? Better to avoid the problem at all. Mishi and I got you a new phone just for your own use. I know you've been to borrowing Mishi's tablet to do any reading at the apartment, but with the phone you can access the web without any restrictions and you can save any websites you want to read later as well as text and video and voice. I'll show you how to use it, come on, it's in the Jeep. Let's get home, it's getting dark out here."

The happy expression on his Sekirei's face brought out a cheerful smile from Gregory as they made to leave the café. Madoka wrapped her hand around Gregory's arm and walked closely beside him as they walked down the narrow, cobbled, backstreet-alley, towards the pay-lot where they had parked the Jeep.

Gregory realized he liked her being close. He liked it quite a lot.

o.0.O.0.o

o.0.O.0.o

"Mado! So do you like the phone?" Mishi asked, flopping onto the bed next to her new blonde roommate.

Mishi was dressed up for Midnight Mass, which all three O'Donnell's were attending. Madoka had begged off; even though she had found the one Sunday service she had attended interesting, she did not feel like spending time in a vehicle with Karen O'Donnell. Madoka's decision to not join them had frustrated Mishi; the teenager liked going out in public with Madoka because then everyone paid attention to them, wherever they went.

"Do you have any questions about it? It's the same kind I use, the new Samsung. It's awesome, you'll love it! I couldn't believe it when Dad said you didn't have a phone, I thought yours must have been stolen with your ID but he said you didn't have one even before!"

Giving Mishi a slight smile, Madoka nodded, "It is true; I did not have a phone before. I never needed one in the small town I grew up in. But I do very much like this one, Mishi. Thank you very much for helping Gregory pick it out for me."

Mishi watched Madoka's face as the pretty blonde answered, trying to figure out why the response did not satisfy her. For days now there was something about the way Madoka talked to her, answered her questions, interacted with her, which was just… off. _Something_ had changed from last week when they were happily watching lesbian erotica together and now. Now, when every signal Mishi received from the gorgeous girl sharing her bed was… friendly? Friendly but… distant?

Friendly! Like Mishi had been put in the "Friend Zone"!

" _Oh my god, that's what's happened! I've been friend zoned! Oh my god!"_ Mishi gaped, her eyes almost bugging out and her mouth hanging open, shocked to the core at the epiphany she'd just had. _"So this is what that feels like? This sucks!"_

Quickly schooling her features back to some semblance of normality, Mishi asked, "So, what are you reading about, Mado?" She needed to probe for more information. If she had been friend zoned, _"Oh my god, this sucks! I've never been the one put in the friend zone!",_ then she _had_ to find out why.

"I was reading the Wikipedia page about New Hampshire. Gregory mentioned that was where he was from and I was curious about it." Madoka held up the phone so Mishi could see the distinctive color scheme of Wikipedia's article pages.

Mishi looked at the phone then stared at Madoka. The blonde girl looked uncomfortable and asked, "What?"

Glancing at the bedroom door to make sure it was shut and no one was likely to be listening, Mishi scooted closer to Madoka and whispered, "Really, Mado? You have to ask what? Come on, what's going on with you and my Dad? Could you be any more obvious? Jesus Christ On A Bicycle, a person would have to be blind to miss the way you look at him lately and the way you talk to him, and here you are spending Christmas Eve just casually reading about New Hampshire? Just because Dad mentioned we're from there and that makes it so interesting that you had to look it up and read about it? Come on!"

Mishi could see Madoka withdrawing into herself, hunching up her shoulders defensively, but Mishi didn't care. She had to know what was going on! There _had_ to be something going on between her Dad and Madoka, or, or, at _least_ Madoka was suddenly interested in her Dad. And that didn't make any sense at all!

"Gregory is a decent and kind man. Why would I not be curious about where he is from? Why would that be a big deal?" Madoka responded to Mishi's whispered interrogation, reluctantly.

Rolling her eyes, Mishi pressed, "Mado, just the other night you were describing Dad as 'old' and 'creepy' and 'gross' and now you've been practically flirting with him and don't think I haven't seen how you reach out to touch his arm now and then and how you smile at him. _Come on_ , it's not like I'm going to go tell my Mom or something, but you should tell me if you've got a thing for my Dad!"

Before Madoka could answer, there was a light tapping on the bedroom door. "Hey," Gregory's voice was muffled by the closed door, "I'm going to grab a shower, anyone need the bathroom first?"

"No, Gregory, thank you."

"No, Dad, I'm good, thanks."

o.0.O.0.o

o.0.O.0.o

Madoka let the silence grow after she and Mishi heard the hall bathroom door close and lock. She did not like that Mishi seemed to know that something had changed between Gregory and herself, but Madoka did not know what to do about it, either. Denying everything seemed the best course, but Mishi was not letting it go. She took after her father way too much in that regard!

"Come on Mado. Level with me, what's going on? _I like you_ , I consider you a friend, I really do. I _promise_ I won't tell _anyone_."

Looking at Mishi as the sixteen-year-old girl spoke so earnestly Madoka felt herself wavering. She was tempted to tell her the truth. After all, if 86 Katsuragi had not spotted her and Gregory from the middle of the street Thursday night, then Mishi could very well be her Ashikabi now and know the truth. Plus, having a girlfriend to talk to about everything would be such a relief for Madoka.

On the other hand… the five days since Gregory O'Donnell had become her Ashikabi had given Madoka an opportunity to see not only Gregory in a new light but Mishi as well.

Gregory's daughter was sweet, she was smart, and she was cute, but she was also shallow and vain. She was more than a bit of a drama queen, loving gossip and having no compunctions about shading her perceptions of events towards the most-drama-producing end. It might have been _fun_ to have Mishi as her Ashikabi, but it also would have been very _dangerous_. Not just for Madoka, but for _Mishi_.

After less than a week of being in Gregory's confidence, of him speaking to her as an equal, of being a part of how he looked at the world, Madoka realized that she was very fortunate it had been Gregory who had kissed her, _"So amazingly well",_ last Thursday night.

Old guy or not.

"I do not know, Mishi. What do you want me to say? That maybe I see Gregory differently now than I did a week ago?" Madoka sat her phone down and pulled herself up on the bed to sit with her back against the headboard and her knees pulled up in front of her. "But, Mishi, nothing is going on like you seem to suspect. I just think Gregory is a person with things about him that are not obvious at first glance; there is more to him than…than… um, than… ahhhhhh? Mmmmm! Oh, _fuck_ _yeah_ …"

"Mado?" Mishi blinked so hard it was almost audible and her eyebrows shot up her forehead. "Say again?"

_{Madoka felt the hot water from the shower pelting her shoulders and head as she held herself away from the wall with one hand against the tile. She was looking down, water dripping from her nose and chin, looking at the blonde girl kneeling between her feet, thick wet hair pulled back away from the girls face and gripped in Madoka's other hand. The girl was so beautiful! Madoka had never imagined someone so desirable, had never felt anything like the overwhelming lust and hunger that filled her entire awareness from just looking at this girl who was kneeling, naked, before Madoka. The girl was stroking and sucking as hard as she could, happily if the pleased moans from the girl were any indication, on Madoka's rock hard erection…_ }

"Wait, what? Unh! AHHH!"

{ _Madoka felt muscles in her lower abdomen and her butt tensing and then strange muscles between her legs_ _squeezed_ _, clenching so hard that it was almost painful. Then an intense shock of pleasure came along with the squeezing! The feeling was beyond anything she had ever imagined possible for her body to produce, she could only shudder and thrust her hips forward, pushing herself deeper into the girl's hot, wet, mouth, the overwhelming need to push deeper and thrust harder were the only thoughts that could exist alongside the pulsing ecstasy._ }

"UNNNNNH! Yessss, suck it!"

"Whatthefuck? Mado? Whatthefuck?" Mishi's startled exclamation barely registered with Madoka; she could barely feel Mishi's hands desperately holding down on Madoka's mouth, stifling her screams of…

"Mmmmmpph!"

{ _Another explosion of pleasure, and another, each spasm accompanied by a_ _squeezing_ _in her groin and a_ _gush_ _into the eager mouth of that divine girl, that beauty on her knees and wrapping her arms around Madoka's hips. She insistently pulled Madoka's lower abdomen flush against her lips, completely swallowing her…_ }

"Mphhh! AMH-hm-hm! EAaafff! Fffummmk mmma pamph!"

"Jesus Christ, Mado, hush! And... suck your what?!" Atop Madoka's thrusting hips and arching back, Mishi's petite body was in danger of being launched completely off the bed as she tried to hold her blonde roomie down while keeping her hands over the other girl's mouth to muffle her shouts.

{ _After what seemed an eternity of pleasure and lust, which had each burned the other as fuel for a bonfire that was surely destroying her entire body, Madoka felt the slow return of sanity, along with a tremor in her legs; legs which were now a bit weak in the knees. She looked through barely open eyes down at the angelic girl who was still lovingly stroking the length of Madoka's rapidly shrinking penis…_ }

Madoka's eyes opened wide, panic and fear zinging across her nervous system, competing with the remnants of the most powerful, and frightening, orgasm she had ever experienced. " _Whaaaaaaa?_ _My rapidly shrinking what?!"_

Madoka realized she was still lying on Mishi's bed but her head was hanging off the edge, with Mishi straddling her torso and holding her hands over Madoka's mouth. Madoka's wide blue eyes stared up at Mishi, terribly confused and alarmed.

It didn't look as though Mishi would have any answers, since her eyes were bugging out in shock. The younger girl's expression was a mix of confusion, alarm, and some embarrassment as well, as she watched Madoka for signs that the blonde girl was done with the… fit… she had been in for the last thirty seconds or so.

"Mado?"

Madoka pulled Mishi's hands away from her mouth and rolled over onto her side, almost pushing Mishi off the bed, again. Madoka lay facing away from the teenage girl, gasping for air, her own hands covering her mouth. It seemed as though she could not catch her breath and for some reason she felt an almost overwhelming urge to cry.

"Mado, are you… okay?" Mishi sat next to her friend, her voice tentative, the confusion she was feeling quite clear.

Still panting for breath, Madoka swiped her now-sweaty hair out of her eyes and turned her head to look helplessly at the teenage girl. "No, I am not okay! Do I look okay?"

"Do you want me to get someone?" Mishi's expression said clearly she did not have any idea who that someone might be, but she had to at least offer to do something.

"Oh god no! I mean, oh… Mishi… I am sorry. No, I just… need to get some air. I will be back in a minute."

Madoka stood on shaky legs and made her way to the apartment patio door as quickly as she could. If she ran into Gregory, or worse, Karen, in the hallway before she could get outside she would probably die of embarrassment.

By the time she pulled the patio door closed behind her, that oddly insistent impulse to start crying overcame her self-control. The night air was cold, especially in just a thin tank top and her very wet barely-there-shorts, but it did help clear away the remnants of the fire that had burned her body and her mind so viciously, so delightfully.

Madoka sat on one of the patio chairs and pulled her legs up and hugged them to her chest, then gave into the emotional storm that demanded release, sobs shaking her shoulders.

o.0.O.0.o

o.0.O.0.o

Gregory stood in his best slacks and a soft cotton undershirt, his damp shower towel draped over a shoulder, in the doorway to Mishi's bedroom. "Where's Mado?"

Mishi was sitting in the middle of her large bed, in her church-dress clothes, with the blankets all messed up around her, looking blankly back at Gregory as though she didn't recognize who he was for a moment, before replying, "She, ah, she stepped out for a minute. She said she needed some air."

Gregory started to turn and go to the patio when his daughter's voice stopped him.

"No, Dad, she said she wanted to be alone to think, so, you know, she's fine. She just needed a minute alone. Really."

Looking back at Mishi, Gregory got the definite feeling he was missing something here. But he had learned from the hard experience of being a father that he really did not need to know _everything_ that went on in his home. He was proud of learning that lesson, since almost every other father he knew completely _failed_ to understand this important fact of life, clinging to some delusion that they had to be in control and in charge of everything that happened in their homes.

Idiots, the lot of them.

Regardless of the feeling that he had in the back of his head, where he had never had any sort of detectable feelings before, which told him Madoka was near, though under some emotional turmoil, he still felt uneasy. But, he made himself take his daughters word for the situation. Mishi deserved that much respect from him, a fact which made him glow with pride at the young woman his little girl was growing up to be.

"Okay. Well, we'll be leaving for Midnight Mass in about 15 minutes."

"Great, okay, thanks Dad." Mishi smiled at him, relieved he was listening to her.

But he did try to "keep an ear" on his feeling about Madoka in case it changed for the worse.

o.0.O.0.o

o.0.O.0.o

By the time the O'Donnell's had left the apartment, Madoka had mostly regained control of her emotions. She had even been able to reassure Gregory that there was no problem when he came to the patio door to check on her, just before leaving for their religious thing.

She did not think Gregory believed her insistence that she was fine, but he didn't argue it. He did advise against staying out in the December night air while wearing what she was barely wearing and he wished her goodnight before he shut the patio door.

Madoka heard Karen slam the front door of the apartment as she departed. Spending much effort figuring out why just did not interest the Sekirei, though.

After they were gone, Madoka sat and focused on calming down. The cold air cleared her head significantly and now she had privacy and silence, so she could think and consider what had just happened in Mishi's bedroom. Madoka replayed her memory of the incident, then filtered out the overwhelming physical sensations, put aside the emotional content and the… alien… urges that had made her want to do nothing more than _push_ and _thrust_ and go _deeper_ … she separated all of that out and isolated just the visual-fantasy information. _Then_ she was able to scrutinize what she'd seen. She recognized the shower in the hallway bathroom, which shared a wall with Mishi's bedroom. And she now recognized the blonde girl who had been so enthusiastically and expertly… servicing… her.

No, that girl had not been doing it to _her_ ; she'd been doing it to _Gregory_.

She understood now that what she had experienced in Mishi's bedroom had come through the bond with her Ashikabi. She had been living _Gregory's_ experience. He had been in the shower in the room next to the bedroom, and he must have been… relieving… himself, and Madoka caught at least the… _end_ of it. She had not only felt what he had been feeling but she had seen the fantasy his imagination had conjured for him and she had experienced his emotions… And he had been _fantasizing_ about _her_!

Madoka saw that face every day in the mirror. But that wasn't what she looked like! Well, it _was_ what she looked like, but it wasn't what Madoka saw when she looked at her face, which was why it took her so long to understand what she'd been seeing.

Was that what she looked like to Gregory, then? When he looked at her? Was she that beautiful to his eyes? Did he feel that _alarming_ degree of adoration and lust when he looked at her? No, not possible, he could not! Living like that would drive someone insane. No one could be so helplessly, intolerably, drawn to touch, to kiss, to feel, to _taste_ , another like that without going crazy!

Madoka closed her eyes and lost herself in thinking about the exquisiteness and perfection of _that girl's_ face. Remembering what it had felt like to look down at _that girl's_ large soap-slick breasts and the flawless curve of her ass as she knelt between Madoka's feet and…

_No_ , it was just too much, _far_ too much. She was momentarily tempted to tear off her clothes just so she could see _that girl's_ body again. But she _knew_ she wouldn't see it the same way now, wouldn't see what Gregory saw.

She hugged her knees to her chest and tried to remember her relationships in the MBI Sekirei Labs, to try to compare what she had seen through her Ashikabi's eyes tonight with what she had seen and felt with the other girls in Group 11.

Madoka had been 16 Toyotama's lover for quite a while, in the MBI Sekirei Labs. What Madoka now figured must have been more than a year. It was difficult to judge the post-puberty time in the Labs since everyone in Group 11 had been caught up to the same physical age so they weren't different sizes anymore. A few months after her Puberty Adjustment, she and Toyotama struck up the relationship that they continued until just recently, when Madoka was removed from the Group 11 Dorms for her final Adjustments, followed by several months of isolation from all the other Sekirei, then release into the city.

When Madoka had come out of her Puberty Adjustment her best friend 44 Yosuga had been away on another adjustment to fix her headaches, one that had taken Yosuga away for weeks. It seemed there were many weeks-long Adjustments for Yosuga then. During that difficult time, in the absence of her lifelong companion and with a new body which brought a great deal of uncomfortable attention to her, Madoka found that she needed a protector from some of the other girls, the ones who were prone to picking on the defenseless, pretty, blonde, Sekirei. They would pick on _and_ push for physical intimacies that Madoka wasn't really ready for, no matter her sudden physiological age.

Other Group 11 girls. Like 14 Chiyo, who was one of the first Group 11 girls to have been through Puberty Adjustment, probably three years before Madoka's own, at Madoka's now-best-guess. Chiyo, who had grown very comfortable with her strong, muscular, body and the appetites it seemed to have come with. Ferocious 14, who had never lost a fight or spar to anyone in Group 11, going back to when they were all just barely older than toddlers.

There was also tall, slender, boyish, and strong-willed, 85 Oshino. Who had never let her hair grow long enough to be mistaken for a girl even before her Puberty Adjustment. Dark-eyed and clever Oshino, who used guile and flattery as well as a precise understanding of social standing and social _weaknesses_ to get what _she_ wanted. Oshino had played on her own general resemblance to 44 Yosuga's post-puberty physique to tempt Madoka into being her play-toy. But no matter how much Madoka missed Yosuga in those long weeks where her best friend was gone on endless Adjustments, 85 Oshino held no appeal. Madoka had seen how faithless 85 had been to her previous playthings and rejected her overtures. Not that Oshino was willing to take "no" for an answer.

Chiyo and Oshino, both of whom Toyotama-onee-sama dealt with, firmly, once number 16 had been adequately motivated.

Toyotama had been the best of Madoka's options. Of the almost twenty Sekirei in Group 11 (there were times where there were more, times when there were less, but at that point there were around twenty Group 11 residents), many were not interested in girls in a sexual way. At least not interested in more than isolated experiments or flings, and that wasn't what Madoka needed. Of those who were known to Madoka to have a sustained interest in females and who were mostly decent and kind and had not been prone to cruelty and bullying, there was 10 Uzume, 16 Toyotama, 18 Ichiya, 40 Shi, and 54 Kuruse. Madoka chose Toyotama. She was strong, she was confident, and she was very highly rated on the Badass Scale.

Madoka used affection, intimacy, and eventually sex itself to make sure her Toyotama-onee-sama was properly motivated and fully committed to protecting her. The small, blonde, Sekirei had no useful powers and couldn't match even the next weakest Sekirei in any sort of sparring contest or fight. Being Toyotama-onee-sama's "little sister" and lover gave Madoka more control over her own fate than she'd thought she would ever have.

And Madoka had picked Toyotama because she saw the same look in Toyotama's eyes that she'd seen in many of the male lab techs. The lab techs were younger, by and large, than the Administrators and Researchers, and as such their contact with the Sekirei was more carefully monitored and limited by the MBI Sekirei Labs Administration. This did not keep the lab techs from getting plenty of chances for leering at the skimpily dressed, nubile, beauties that MBI had captive. Madoka had never _really_ understood what those looks meant. She called it "desire" but her _own_ desires and her own appreciation for the beauty of her lover Toyotama and, indeed, all of the other girls in Group 11, was so different, so much milder, from what was hinted at in that… hungry… _scary_ … look.

It turned out that 16 Toyotama had a deeply buried desire for pretty little things. An appetite Madoka helped Toyotama realize and Madoka had encouraged.

It took some effort and most of that was in learning how to best use the new tools her Puberty Adjustment had given her. But eventually Madoka had her way. She had turned 16 Toyotama, who'd been indifferent to the child Madoka, into the one person no one in Group 11 would cross when it came to Toyotama's "little sister".

Toyotama had been an eager lover, once she had been convinced it was okay to do what she wanted with Madoka's body and that Madoka would do whatever Toyotama wanted in return. Getting Toyotama to cross lines she could not easily step back over had taken time and effort but it had been worth it.

Madoka had even agreed to Toyotama-onee-sama sharing her with her best friend, 18 Ichiya, on several occasions. Doing so further committed Toyotama and it made Ichi-chan glad to watch out for Madoka too, even if not so devotedly as Toyotama. Ichi-chan had her own amusements and her own occasional pillow friends among the other girls, but she had never had the drive that Madoka sensed in number 16, did not have that same burning hunger for pretty little things. But the three of them had their fun, absolutely. Madoka had found both of the strong, older, girls attractive and sexy. She had very much enjoyed what it felt like to be wanted by both of them. But she had never felt _lust_ for them.

After the revelations of tonight, Madoka doubted she had ever previously experienced lust at all.

Madoka both regretted _and_ was glad that when 44 Yosuga was finally free of the headaches that had plagued her since her Puberty Adjustment that Yosu-chan had little interest in the pastimes Madoka and her big sister/lover enjoyed. Yosu-chan was still Madoka's best friend, they usually slept in the same dorm room and often the same bed (the cot-style beds in the dorms weren't nearly wide enough to allow Madoka to comfortably _sleep_ with Toyotama) but Yosuga never quite understood the appeal of slippery body parts going bump over and over. It had bothered Yosuga that she couldn't be a part of that with Madoka, but Madoka had secretly felt that this odd lack on Yosuga's part had probably preserved their friendship through the turbulent and violent adolescence all the Sekirei seemed to experience, and it kept their relationship from becoming something… trivial.

Trivial, like how Madoka had ultimately felt about Toyotama. There was good reason why it was Yosuga and Madoka who had actually planned how to meet up after they were released into the city, and not Toyotama and Madoka.

But in all the experimenting and playing and sweaty lovemaking, Madoka had never felt anything like tonight… not even close! You could not even call the "clouds and the rain" Madoka had managed with Toyotama or Ichi-chan to be the same sort of thing as what she had caught through the bond, tonight, from Gregory. That was no "clouds and rain", that was a tsunami, a typhoon!

Madoka had never appreciated that someone could feel the lust she had felt when looking down at _that girl_ while her eager mouth wrapped so…

What happened tonight had scared her. To lose control of herself, to have something pleasurable be _inflicted_ on her, to have that kind of lust, and the mind numbing ecstasy that followed, hammered into her mind and her body? If she hadn't immediately realized that it had happened by accident, that Gregory had no awareness of what she had experienced, she would have been furious with him. Instead, she could not blame Gregory at all, and accepted that it had been just one of those things no one knew could happen between a Sekirei and their Ashikabi.

Right now Madoka was not sure if she was dreading, or looking forward to, the next time it happened.

Because, terrifying loss of control or not, it was _narcotic_ looking at _that girl's_ face, it was thrilling even thinking of touching her, thinking about _tasting_ her…

Madoka shivered in the cold night air, suddenly and depressingly reminded that she was still sitting outside on the O'Donnell's patio, almost naked, and that the temperature was almost freezing. And that her pants were extremely soaked though. Again. And cold. Very very cold.

It was past time to go inside, get a hot shower, change clothes, and try to get some sleep.

o.0.O.0.o

o.0.O.0.o

* * *

From the Notebooks of Gregory O'Donnell

_**Sekirei**_ –

_**The First Five**_ – The Sekirei of Group 11 referred to the "grown" Sekirei which they knew of (Sekirei 01 through 05) as the First Five. Group 11 had no contact with 01, but they did see the other members of the First Five over the years. (See below: MBI Sekirei Labs - Sekirei Ages)

**01 (No Name)** – Madoka claims that the only adult in the ship was numbered 01 and was the Sekirei responsible for caring for the 107 unborn who were in the ship. Madoka never saw 01 nor did she ever meet anyone who claimed to have met 01, though it was strongly implied that 02 Matsu had.  
This Sekirei took on a mythological status among the younger Sekirei, especially given the fearful and lonely lives they lived as children.  
The MBI Researchers, Administrators, and the older Sekirei themselves, forbade any questions from the Group 11 Sekirei concerning any non-Group 11 Sekirei. Madoka says it was popularly considered that this rule existed only because they didn't want anyone asking about 01. A rule forbidding any non-Group 11 queries solved any problem MBI's staff might have had with keeping their stories straight, as well as preventing proof of Sekirei 01 by inference.  
Madoka believes that 01 is out there, trying to get free from MBI so that she can rescue the 107 Sekirei upon who MBI has visited so much wrong. I find myself skeptical, but I am also reluctant to disabuse Madoka of a faith that has brought her at least some comfort in what has been a remarkably dark and difficult life so far.  
If this Sekirei is truly still alive, I hope for Madoka's sake she is truly a prisoner of MBI or that Madoka never finds out otherwise. What trauma would it be for me, a stable adult, to discover the Christ of my faith was not only real but had sold out to the Devil instead of sacrificing himself for us?  
As difficult as that would be to imagine, the reaction in the Sekirei who had faith in 01 would be far more extreme.  
I truly do hope their faith is never proven wrong. Let this 01 be dead and long dissected in MBI's Labs, for the sake of all these poor girls.

**02 Matsu** – Red hair, glasses, a 'brain type', she was known to not having any combat abilities, much like 22 Kochou and 37 Madoka. Reported to have been a mature adult at the same time Madoka remembers herself and her Group 11 peers being approximately five years old, physiologically. The last time Madoka saw 02 Matsu was just over a year and a half before Phase One started and Madoka considered 02 Matsu to have not aged particularly noticeably, other than perhaps being more curvy and endowed than she had been when Madoka first saw her.  
02 helped the MBI scientists in their work with the Sekirei, this much is clear. How much of this cooperation was actual _collaboration_ and how much of it was motivated by seeking _harm reduction_ is impossible to tell. She _was_ the only person to make any effort to educate the younger Sekirei about their origins, according to Madoka.  
According to the rumors in Group 11, 02 disappeared from the MBI Sekirei Labs several months before Madoka was separated from Group 11 into her own final adjustments (approx. October 2019), before the Sekirei Plan launched. If 02 parted ways with MBI at that point, it would have been sometime around July 2019.

**03 Kazehana** – Black hair, beautiful face and figure, she was reputed to be the most powerful of the Sekirei other than the mysterious 01. She was known to be fixated on the President of MBI, Hiroto Minaka, and constantly courting his attention. This well-known attraction 03 had for Hiroto Minaka compromised her in the view of most of the Group 11 Sekirei, even though 03 seems to have made efforts over the years at endearing herself to the younger Sekirei, playing up a "big sister" role with them on the occasions she spent time in the Group 11 dorms. The younger Sekirei believed (for good reason or not it is impossible to tell at this stage) that 03 would betray them to Minaka if doing so would put her in his good graces.  
Only 10 Uzume and 67 Riko were trusting of 03 Kazehana, among the Group 11 Sekirei.  
Like 02 Matsu, 03 seems to have disappeared from the MBI Sekirei Labs before the Sekirei Plan began. The last time she was seen by anyone in Group 11 was, best guess, sometime in mid-2017, a bit over two years before Phase One of the Sekirei Plan began. Given the rules which forbade questions about any non-Group 11 Sekirei only rumors followed 03's disappearance.

**04 Karasuba** – Grey-silver hair, slender, a katana always in her belt. She carried a distinct aura of menace around her, which impressed all of the Group 11 Sekirei into avoiding the "Black Crow" as much as possible. 04 seems to have had very little interaction with Group 11, at least from Madoka's point of view.

**05 Mutsu** – The only male Sekirei in the "older" group. Mutsu carried a Japanese sword at all times. He also has grey-silver hair and a general facial similarity to 04 Karasuba. Madoka reports that rumor had it 04 and 05 were twins.  
Mutsu is very tall, two meters at least, broad of shoulder, and likely a powerful physical presence. He was a forbidding and unfriendly figure to the younger Sekirei of Group 11. They all felt as though 05 Mutsu did not like any of them, and as though he were offended by their very existence.  
Madoka says he disappeared from the MBI Sekirei Labs long before any of the others in the First Five group.

_**MBI Sekirei Labs**_ –

**The Sekirei's ages** – There is a noticeable problem with the ages of the Sekirei compared to the earliest they could have been born (no earlier than 1999).

Madoka says none of the Sekirei that she spoke to recalled any life before the labs. Given that Madoka remembers from about the age of three (toddlers) living in what were called "crèches" instead of the later residence in "Dorms" (and note that Terran Human's only record permanent memory from about the age of 5, not 3), Madoka remembers meeting and interacting with the "older" Sekirei (the First Five).  
Those Sekirei were adults _at that time_ , there is a definite problem with the time line.  
Quizzing Madoka about the appearance of the older Sekirei, our best guess is that 02 Matsu, 03 Kazehana, 04 Karasuba, and 05 Mutsu were all approximately 20 years old, physiologically, at the time Madoka and her peers were five or six years old, physiologically. There's no way to know how old Madoka was by the calendar unfortunately.  
If their ship was discovered in 1999 and the earliest the first Sekirei could be born was sometime in 2000, then assuming Madoka was 5 years old in 2005 (fitting her appearance of about nineteen today in 2019) then _how could there be four Sekirei who were at least eighteen years old when Madoka was 5?_  
Madoka has mentioned "Adjustments", periods of time when a Sekirei was taken away and put unconscious for modifications to be done to them by MBI's Researchers. It appears that at least some part of these Adjustments was to artificially age the Sekirei. Otherwise it would be impossible for a five year old Madoka to remember encountering a twenty year old 04 Karasuba. Not if the earliest 04 Karasuba could have been born (gestated, whatever the correct term is) is 1999-2000!  
Not all Adjustments were about aging the subject. But there were several that were, enough that it is impossible to estimate Madoka's calendar age.  
The Sekirei in Group 11 made particular note of hallmark Adjustments, such as the Puberty Adjustment. In a Puberty Adjustment the Sekirei would depart the Dorms as a child (Madoka establishes them as all about the same as 8 or 9 year old children in this stage) and come back as an adolescent with notable breasts and wider hips, just one day later in some cases.  
What sort of technology has MBI acquired from the Sekirei ship? Artificially aging a person? One assumes they must be able to use this technology to not only age the body but also to fill in at least _some_ of what the Sekirei would learn in those missing, accelerated, years. Simulated experience? Education? Hard-copied algorithims or heuristics stamped onto the mind of the patient? Producing an infant mind in an adult body would be utterly useless for anything other than organ harvesting and organ harvesting was obviously not what MBI was doing in their Sekirei Labs program.  
One sincerely hopes that they were able to provide the accelerated subjects with some emotional maturity in addition to whatever other mental aging was done, or all of the Sekirei will be walking time bombs, rife with emotional and mental instabilities that are almost guaranteed to go off at some point. Those who were artificially aged the most would likely have the most noticeable problems, the more extreme instabilities.  
If so, that would explain why MBI spent so much effort having the Sekirei spend time as toddlers, then time as children, then more time as adolescents, instead of simply maturing all 107 unborn Sekirei to adulthood in one go.  
What else could this technology do? What miracles of education, health, disease control, are MBI holding back from the rest of humanity?

And, most importantly, why?

* * *

Started Oct 6 2014  
Completed Oct 9 2014  
Final Edits May 10 2015  
Posted May 16 2015


	2. NGFOM 2.2 - Endings and Beginnings

**No Game For Old Men**

Book 2.2 – Endings and Beginnings

* * *

 

 

Wednesday, December 25th, 2019

Yoyogi District, Shibuya Ward, Shin Tokyo

 

It was just short of midnight on Christmas. Gregory O'Donnell would ordinarily be asleep by now, comfortably abed with his wife, content and happy with new memories of another happy Christmas spent with his family.

Ordinarily.

Instead, Gregory sat out on the patio of the family apartment, finishing off a second glass of scotch whiskey and smoking a cigarette. And being very cold, seeing as the temperature was damn near freezing out here.

Gregory tipped the glass up to get the last of the whiskey to drip past the ice cubes, then set the crystal tumbler down on the patio table in disgust. Not enough to bother with. He looked appraisingly at the bottle.

" _I shouldn't. Two is my limit. Hn… "_

A minute passed. He flicked more ash from the end of his cigarette.

" _Eh, no one else gives a fuck, why should I?"_

He poured himself another whiskey then picked up the glass, unhurriedly swirling the ice in the golden liquid while pulling in another lungful of delicious tobacco smoke.

The cold air made the exhalation of warm air and smoke dramatically visible, which amused him more than it probably should have. Then he stared off into the nighttime distance, a frown settling on his face, deepening the creases on either side of his mouth.

What a wretched Christmas. Karen had not said a word to him after they left for Midnight Mass. A silent treatment that had endured through the night and all through Christmas Day as well. Gregory knew she was not happy about "Mishi's friend" staying with them and almost every day that passed she seemed to become even more unhappy. But he was damned if he could figure out why, beyond the obvious of Madoka being an incredibly hot teenage girl and Karen being a forty-year-old middle aged woman. Madoka was actually an easy person to like; Karen gave the girl no chances though.

It wasn't like Karen had been in the Jeep last Thursday night when Gregory had kissed Madoka and became her Ashikabi; and Karen couldn't know about that. It wasn't like he had kissed the girl since then, either. His behavior had been above board! So what in the hell was Karen's problem?

There was that whole "accidentally seeing Madoka's amazingly perfect tits" thing the other night, but that was an accident, completely. Madoka would not have flashed him her tits if he had _asked_ ; it was just an accident! And Karen wasn't aware of that incident either.

Gregory was distracted for several minutes imagining a few scenarios in which Madoka agreed to show him her tits when asked. When he realized which recently-well-worn-rut his mind had settled into, again, he shook his head to clear it and tried to focus on the _problems_ that needed _solving_.

Gregory wondered, not for the first time, if he should have told Karen everything when he and Madoka had returned late, last Thursday. He wondered how different everything would be if he'd done so. Very different, for sure; but in what particulars?

At the time, he had been very worried about what MBI and Hiroto Minaka had been communicating to him by way of that casual demonstration of their reach. That seemingly innocuous video conference in his Jeep.

Gregory knew the components of his Jeep very well, especially the dash electronics. He knew, beyond any doubt, that the Jeep did not have the hardware capability to host a video conference the likes of which he'd had with Hiroto Minaka. _There was no camera in the Jeep's dashboard._ The 20cm LED display was not connected to _any_ video feeds or to any components which themselves had video capability. There was no Wi-Fi video streaming hardware built into the Jeep's electronics. There was no cellular telephone service built into the Jeep's components, to allow for video calls over cell networks. The Jeep lacked any method to connect to any sort of data network _and_ it lacked the specific hardware needed to make video conference calls work, notably the lack of a camera in the dash. These truths weren't up for debate, they weren't matters of opinion. His Jeep could not do what Hiroto Minaka had it do!

In other words, MBI and Minaka were telling him that their agents had accessed his Jeep at some point after Madoka started staying with the O'Donnell's on Saturday, December 14th. They had added to the Jeep's electronics and modified other components. They had added or modified at least enough hardware to allow Minaka to "just happen" to appear upon the big display in the dashboard, for an "impromptu" video conference with his new Ashikabi. All of this done smoothly and professionally enough that those additions and modifications were not detected before they were called upon, the night of Thursday, December 19th.

Hell, even the GPS still worked perfectly on the display like it always had. As far as Gregory could tell with a casual perusal of the dash electronics, from the gauge cluster to the media player, everything was still 100% stock, just as designed by the Chrysler Group LLC and manufactured in Toledo, Ohio.

Gregory received the unspoken message from MBI loud and clear. If they had accessed his Jeep long enough to install new hardware and software, test it to insure it worked, and polished the installation so it was undetectable until needed, then Gregory was certain they'd have had no difficulty doing the same within his family's apartment.

And _that_ pissed him off. He was protective of his Jeep, but his computer systems in his home were his baby and the idea of unapproved fingers pawing about inside the hardware and the software of his big main computer made him quite angry. Sure, yes, of course it burned him to think some MBI Security Intelligence mook might be watching security camera footage of his teenaged daughter in the bath. Yes, of course that was infuriating.

But the idea that they'd messed with his computers? A God damned outrage!

Gregory was a fair shade-tree mechanic, he felt moderately competent working on his Jeep for some things. In the same sense, he was a fair computer-jockey. He felt comfortable working with, upgrading, and even pushing beyond manufacturers' specs the various components of his electronic surroundings. He'd laid out the network for the big tower computer in the living room and all the peripheral components to work with each other. Many of the smaller, less robust, electronic devices in their household were set up to lean on the big server box, letting it handle as much of the actual number crunching as was possible. The tablets and phones and the one set of 'Google Glasses' Gregory had toyed with last year which were gathering dust in a drawer somewhere, the cellular watches and the wall mounted LED tvs, all of them were connected and played well with each other, the network as a whole was equal to more than the sum of its parts. Also, his photography cameras, all of which were set up to immediately dump their memory into the big server box as soon as they got within range of the network. The server knew exactly what to do with the new images as soon as they were handed over, filing and indexing and applying naming conventions established exactly as Gregory liked it.

Into all of this MBI had… inserted… its grubby fingers.

It made Gregory feel dirty.

Sullied.

Violated.

They likely even had access to his porn folder!

Gregory grasped the tumbler of scotch and drained it before filling it again.

Worst, he knew better than to fool himself into believing he could find so much as a trace of modification within the software on the systems, traces that would prove that someone had inserted reporting-ware and redirect-ware. Nor would he believe he could fix whatever it was that MBI's experts had done. The most he would accomplish would be to fool himself into believing he had fixed what they had done.

They could have installed actual _hardware_ redirectors for all he knew. They could have a secondary router installed between his apartment and the nearest telecom node mirroring every request his router made. There was no limit to how compromised the entire system could be, now.

So… he made what changes he could and lived with the rest. He'd already reprogrammed his phones and cameras to dump their image data to brand new cloud storage accounts instead of to the big server. Otherwise, just going about his business as usual seemed the best plan.

He wondered how many of the other Ashikabi were too naïve or just too stupid to get the point of the little "welcome to the Sekirei Plan, suckers" video-conference demonstration from MBI. A fair number of them, he would guess. Especially if most of them were young 20-somethings. Gregory sipped his scotch and smiled grimly at that image. An idiot 20-year-old ronin, gaping like a fish as his 25-year-old cathode-ray-tube type television, complete with bunny-ear antennae and a channel selector operated by turning a knob, hosts a real-time video conference with full duplex audio. The idiot would be blithely talking back and forth with Hiroto Minaka and his insane white cape, being told about the Sekirei Plan while not being told anything that might help him, a vaguely surprised "Wow, how did they do that?" expression on the idiots face.

Yeah. Gregory could easily see that happening.

So yes, he'd had a lot on his mind when he had arrived at the apartment Thursday night, with Madoka carrying her "care package" box from MBI., The box, with printed "#37" on the exterior, contained new clothing and replacements for her false ID and her MBI Platinum Card.

Then Karen had lit into him right away about being late and not calling…

He _had_ thought about telling her everything. But not until the next day.

And by then it seemed wiser to keep quiet. "J _ust for now",_ he had told himself.

He knew ' _just for now'_ was really the chickenshit version of ' _from now on'._ Gregory did _try_ to be honest with himself, even if honesty sometimes took until the next day and a clearer head. Or more scotch.

Of course it became more difficult to tell Karen about the crazy mostly-hypothetical-still alien Sekirei and the multi-national trillion-yen corporation which was making threats towards the O'Donnell's. Threats of dire consequences if they didn't keep quiet about the Sekirei Plan. And of course there was the actual danger that Madoka had brought into their lives .

As well, Gregory would have had to fess up to misleading Karen about Madoka in the first place, with Mishi's help.

" _Misleading? Be honest, Greg. It was 'lying to Karen about Madoka in the first place'. Calling it 'misleading' is more chickenshit, and you know it."_

Gregory knew a fair part of why he had not said anything was because he did not want to hear about how his "stray dog adoption" nature had endangered his family.

He was already aware of this; he really did not need Karen screaming it into his ear. And he knew that was exactly what would happen. Karen screaming things at him that he already knew.

There was also that kissing thing.

Yeah.

Didn't really want to talk to Karen about that, either.

So he kept quiet, even though he understood that the situation was untenable. Now he really needed to figure out what to do from here. To take care of Madoka, to patch things up with his wife, to distance the O'Donnell's from whatever risks the Sekirei Plan brought.

But other than finding somewhere else for Madoka to live, which he couldn't even start on until tomorrow at the earliest, he was drawing a blank.

If Madoka had her own apartment, what would that mean for her and her Ashikabi? They were expected to be a "team" in the Sekirei Plan. Gregory was certain that MBI had contingency plans for dealing with recalcitrant Ashikabi, they would have to. He doubted just sticking his Sekirei in her own apartment and contacting her every few days to see if she was okay was going to cut it with MBI.

He was _very_ sure it would not cut it with Madoka.

He took another sip of the cold scotch whiskey and then swirled the ice around in the glass. No, Madoka would not find that arrangement acceptable. And _that_ was… unexpected. Over the last week the beautiful Sekirei had grown downright affectionate with Gregory. He did not notice it at first; it had happened gradually, but he saw it now. She often reached out to touch him when she would look up at him and smile. She would take his arm with her hand if they were walking next to each other. She smiled at him, as though just seeing him near made her happy.

It was not anything more than what Mishi might do. Not _really_. But… Gregory knew that whatever the relationship was it was not familial. Nor was it the mentor-student type relationship that Gregory fostered between himself and his students. There were elements of both, true. But…

Gregory accepted that it wasn't innocent. At least, not the way he thought of her. He hadn't taken communion at Midnight Mass, because he knew he had sinned in his heart.

His wife seemed to take his abstention from communion as confirmation of whatever her suspicions were, to Gregory's annoyance.

Gregory could not fool himself that he did not _love every minute_ of Madoka's nearby presence. He couldn't fool himself into thinking he didn't love the fact that he was _important_ to her. It was beyond the flattery a man might feel at the attention of a beautiful young woman. To be clear, it _was_ that, yes. But… more, too.

Gregory now appreciated that while there _might_ be a man, somewhere, who could let such attention from such a beautiful young woman roll over him and be unaffected, Gregory O'Donnell was not that man.

And he knew, he _knew_ , that no matter what he did next, this was going to end badly. The gods always punished those whose reach exceeded their grasp and Sanjunana Madoka very much exceeded his grasp.

He was swimming in deeper waters than he had any business in.

Gregory looked at the bottle of scotch as he absently swirled the ice cubes within his glass. He tossed his cold cigarette butt into the can next to the table and he sighed. What he really needed was to go to bed. It was cold out here, he was tired, and he was not solving any of his problems by drinking more scotch.

But he also did not want to go lay down in his bed and spend another night with his wife's back turned to him, anger and judgment radiating from her even in her sleep.

He lit another cigarette.

And since he was going to be out here long enough to smoke another, he poured himself another drink.

Why not? No one else cared; why should he?

Gregory took another drink and looked off into the night.

" _Man, she really has amazing tits."_

o.0.O.0.o

o.0.O.0.o

Thursday evening, _"Boxing Day,"_ Gregory thought to himself as he lay on the couch, watching the sequel to "Blade Runner" on the living room's big monitor. A surprisingly good movie, really. And the all-new original soundtrack from Vangelis was worth whatever it cost the producers.

The girls were in Mishi's bedroom where Mishi was giving Madoka the "Teenage Girl Cell Phone Tutorial" on how to use her new Samsung phone. Gregory was a fair tech head but no one in the entire world, including the engineers at Samsung, knew as much about how to use their phones as the teenage girls who used them did. Gregory knew Madoka was in good hands; she'd come out of the session an expert in the use of her new phone.

Gregory glanced at the front door as it opened and Karen walked in, right on time from work. He kept his face neutral and his eyes on the TV as she took of her coat and hung it with her purse on the back of one of the breakfast-bar stools. He could feel her looking at him, reproachfully. Gregory now wished that he had not spent his day off work lounging around in his flannel pajama bottoms and an old t-shirt, watching movies. Karen standing there in an ¥80,000 business suit and him lying on the couch unshaven and in pajamas was not equal footing.

"She goes, by tomorrow, Greg."

"Say again?" Gregory flicked the pause button for the movie and frowned. "Madoka, you mean? You want to throw her out on St. Stephen's Feast? Or tomorrow on the Feast of St. John? Seriously?"

Karen did not appear to find Gregory's wit amusing. "She goes, by tomorrow, Greg."

"Karen," Gregory replied, trying to moderate the tone of his voice, though it was difficult, "then perhaps you should tell Mishi that her friend has to get out by tomorrow. I don't know what your issue is with the girl but if you just can't stand her that much then why don't you tell Mishi. She's her friend."

Karen was audibly grinding her teeth; Gregory could _hear_ it across the living room. Admittedly, it was a Japanese-apartment-scale living room, but still. He shuddered to think how much money in porcelain crowns she was grinding away, standing there.

She responded to his suggestion with one word: "No."

"What? No? What do you mean 'no'?"

But she didn't answer. She had already turned her back, picked up her purse and coat, and was heading to the bedroom.

"Just 'no'? What the fuck, Karen?" Gregory sat up and rubbed his hands across his unshaven face. This whole damn situation was getting more aggravating by the day.

It was his job to kick "Mishi's friend" out into the cold? Because Karen had a problem? That was _bullshit_. Well, it would be bullshit if Madoka were here because Mishi was her friend from school. But that _was_ the story as far as Karen knew. So this was _bullshit_. Where did Karen get off telling him he had to kick the girl out, when Karen was the one with a problem?

A pillow hit him in the side of the head, followed by a folded blanket. Gregory looked over to the hallway that lead to the bedrooms, frowning in confusion.

"And you can sleep in here."

"What the fuck, Karen?"

But she was already slamming the bedroom door.

Gregory flopped back onto the couch. The fuck? Twenty damn years and he had never "slept on the couch" because his wife was mad at him.

Does that really even happen? That is just in movies and TV shows, right?

He looked at his pillow from his side of the bed and the blanket.

"Guess fucking not." He placed the still partially folded blanket at the far end of the couch and lay down again, looking at the paused movie on the TV screen, muttering to himself, "I'm still not telling her she has to go. Karen can do that shit if she feels that strongly about it."

"Fuckin' bullshit."

Gregory was so upset and involved with his own anger and frustration that he completely missed the white-hot flare of emotion in the back of his mind, where his bond to his Sekirei was kept.

o.0.O.0.o

o.0.O.0.o

Madoka had been about to exit the hallway bath when Karen had returned home. Instead, Madoka shut the bathroom door and tried to use her Farsight. Madoka concentrated on "seeing" around the wall and into the hallway, and "hearing" what Karen and Gregory were saying to each other. She managed to push her point-of-view into the hallway, and from there she watched and listened until she saw Karen return to the master bedroom and slam the door, after throwing the pillow and blanket at Gregory.

Certain that she would not run into Karen in the hallway now, Madoka opened the bathroom door and stepped out.

Madoka stood there in the hallway, her fists clenched and her face contorted into a snarl, trying to keep control of her emotions. She felt a rush of anger in her heart like she had never experienced in her life. Not just anger but _rage._ Rage, and a desire to _hurt_ and _tear_ and _kill_ , boiling up from some previously hidden place in her Sekirei heart. She felt almost overwhelmed by cruel, hot, emotions, of a sort that she had never thought herself capable.

All directed at Gregory's wife, Karen.

Madoka glared at the closed bedroom door that stood between her and the woman who had infuriated her, and who had _hurt her Ashikabi_.

Into the burning darkness of her own mind, Madoka shouted, _"Just leave, you mean spirited bitch! Just go! You do not want to be here anyway!"_

Finding the silent shouting in her own head cathartic, Madoka waited the several long minutes that it took for her heart rate to calm. She slipped back into the room that she had been sharing with Mishi, then tried to pay attention to the other girl as she described the functions of Madoka's new phone.

It was some time, though, before she could truly concentrate on anything other than her desire for Karen to be gone from her and Gregory's lives.

o.0.O.0.o

o.0.O.0.o

The next morning, Karen slamming the apartment door behind her as she left for work roused Gregory from his sleep. She was either pissed she had to go to work on a Friday while Gregory was off all week or she was still pissed about Madoka.

Or pissed that Gregory hadn't spent the evening begging her for forgiveness through the door to their bedroom.

Or something else entirely. Who knew?

 _Probably_ pissed that Gregory hadn't begged for forgiveness for his many flaws and sins through the closed bedroom door. Their relationship had become… unbalanced over the last few years, in the sense that Karen had, against the normal course of these sorts of things, aged quite nicely compared to her husband and was now a rather more handsome woman than a casual observer would guess Gregory would have as his wife. She also now made quite a bit more money than Gregory did.

Gregory had accepted these new truths as they had developed; he refused to be the sort of insecure man who was unmade by his wife eclipsing him in her career (or any other aspect of life for that matter). Nevertheless, both of these new facts of life were at least a _little_ bit of a turnaround from the early years of their marriage and Karen now had a tendency to expect Gregory to grovel whenever she was in a bad mood.

Gregory had noticed this tendency and he just put up with it. _You put up with things_ in a marriage. That's what kept marriages together. So he occasionally groveled, if that was the price of keeping Karen content.

Last night he had not groveled. And that's probably why Karen left for work with a slammed door and not a word to him.

Slamming doors, yelling arguments. Gregory figured their neighbors must have been loving the gaijin mouth-breathers who don't know how to behave like civilized people. Though, to be fair, only one of their neighbors in the apartment block were that sort. Most were pretty liberal, for Japanese. Which isn't really very liberal at all, but it could have been worse.

Groggy, but incredibly happy that he'd insisted on the _very expensive couch_ instead of the cheaper couch when they had selected their living room furniture five years ago, Gregory stumbled into the kitchen, started a pot of coffee, then considered making a bit of Friday morning breakfast for himself, Mishi, and Madoka.

Pancakes sounded good. Gregory checked to see if they had the necessary ingredients as well as maple syrup. He muttered to himself as he looked through the pantry, "Be damned if I'm having pancakes without maple syrup…"

"I would be glad to go to the store at the corner and get some, Gregory." Head and shoulders buried in the pantry, Gregory smiled. That voice. He _really_ liked that voice.

He just _had_ to take Madoka to karaoke some evening. She would _kill_ if she could carry a tune at all.

"G'morning, Mado." Gregory leaned back out of the kitchen pantry and smiled over at the short blonde girl.

 _Smiled at his Sekirei_ , a part of his mind, way in the back of his head, insisted. That particular part of his mind, which had been appropriately and decently still for 40 years, had become persistent and vocal over the last few days.

"Here, I'll write it down, Mado. You okay for walking down to the corner grocery? I'll go with you if you like; I'd just need to get dressed."

Madoka held up her phone and replied, "I can make notes on this now, so just tell me what we need and I will go get it. And I think I am okay to go to the grocery for a few items without an escort, Ashikabi-san."

Gregory sniggered then nodded his agreement, "Alright, as you wish, my dear Miss Sanjunana! We _do_ need maple syrup. Not 'pancake syrup' or 'butter flavored syrup' or some other crap, but ' _maple syrup'_. If they don't have any then come back and I'll drive to the big grocery. I'm serious, Mado! Genuine real actual maple syrup or nothing. If in doubt, snap a pic and text it to me to be sure."

"Yes sir!" Madoka grinned at her Ashikabi's serious insistence on this critical breakfast component.

He muttered to himself as he checked the refrigerator's contents, "No son of New Hampshire like me is going to tarnish his palate with that 'maple flavored' or 'butter flavored' corn syrup abomination that passes for…"

Madoka did her best to only _quietly_ laugh at Gregory's weirdness about syrup.

Gregory gave her the rest of a short shopping list, enough for breakfast and lunch, no more than would be comfortable for her to carry home in two canvas bags, which he also handed her from the hook in the pantry where such canvas bags were kept.

As she left for the store, Gregory could not help but appreciate the new athletic pants Madoka was wearing. He did not know if they were sweat pants, yoga pants, spray-on-paint, or a temporary rub-on tattoo, but it sure was nice watching her walk away while wearing them. Madoka had the kind of rounded inverted-heart-shaped ass that songs should be written about. Poetry composed for. The most talented sculptors in the world should be commissioned to immortalize that tush in timeless marble so that blind people could run their hands across it so as to understand what perfection is. Really, if not for her flawless face and DD cup tits, Madoka would probably be famous for her incredible tush.

" _Has to be an alien. Has to be."_

Once his Sekirei was gone from the apartment and on her way to the store, Gregory decided on a quick shower and some much needed "relief". He had a while before Mado would be back with the groceries. And _damn_ but that had been a _hell_ of a nice view of her ass…

o.0.O.0.o

o.0.O.0.o

Ten minutes later, Sekirei number 37 Madoka was picking herself up off the floor of the local small grocery, blushing so intensely she was sure blood vessels were going to burst in her cheeks.

She tried to graciously accept the solicitously offered help that the wide-eyed young man who worked at the grocery offered. He scurried about and collected her purchases from where they had fallen and he replaced them in the canvas tote bags for her. The helpful young man even went so far as to fetch a fresh new dozen eggs, as the original dozen she'd purchased were now compromised in their structural integrity thanks to her recent bout of _thrashing about on the floor while seemingly attempting to hump the Kikkoman Soy Sauce display rack!_

Her acceptance of his aid was probably a few notches short of "gracious" and quite a bit closer to "snarling with her lips pulled back from her teeth". But she _did_ try and should get credit for trying.

"No, I am fine, thank you! Thank you! I am fine!" She fled several other _very concerned_ young men who had each offered to give her a lift back to her home in their cars since she obviously was not well.

By the time she was almost back to the O'Donnell apartment the crisp December morning air had cooled her embarrassment greatly. Nevertheless, she _did_ make a point from now on to try to notice if Gregory had had his morning shower yet _before_ she went out in public early in the day.

If she ever showed her face in public again, that is.

Madoka also made a note to buy more of these athletic pants. Her Ashikabi apparently _really_ liked them.

o.0.O.0.o

o.0.O.0.o

After the breakfast dishes had been cleaned and put away by the girls, Gregory called them out onto the patio to talk. While Mishi put on more clothes and Madoka went to fetch her athletic hoodie, to suit the sunny but cold December 27th weather, Gregory poured himself another cup of coffee and took it out to the patio. He was just lighting a cigarette when Madoka and Mishi stepped out onto the patio.

Mishi had to complain, of course. In English, since the family had long ago defined the patio as 'in the apartment' for purposes of the House Rules on Languages. "Jeez Dad, if you'd quit smoking we could talk inside like civilized people, you know that?"

"Hn." Gregory gave his daughter a flat look.

She rolled her eyes, "Argh! Stop it with that 'Hn' thing!"

Gregory's facial control broke at that and he started laughing. "Alright, and yes, I know, I shouldn't smoke. That's not news, sweetie."

"Hn." Mishi returned, causing Gregory to laugh again.

"Okay, okay, stop it, I need to talk to you both about something serious and you're making that impossible." Gregory took a deep breath and exhaled loudly, his good humor evaporating. Madoka was sitting across from him at the patio table, her hands in the pockets of her hoodie, quietly waiting to hear what Gregory wanted to say. Mishi was less patient.

"Alright, Dad, what's up? Is this about Mom?"

Gregory nodded, "Yeah. Last night when she got home, not only did she throw me out of the bedroom to sleep on the couch as you saw this morning but she also told me Mado had to move out, today." Gregory ignored the expected and loud protests from Mishi and kept talking, "And she said she wouldn't tell you. I had to. Which is kind of bullshit, since she's the one with the problem."

Madoka sat quietly, waiting to hear what her Ashikabi wanted her to do. Gregory got the distinct feeling that she felt he would take care of the problem by whatever means necessary.

It was nice for people to have faith in you, but at the same time Gregory felt that people might have unrealistic expectations.

Mishi was, again and predictably, not nearly as reserved in her response. "That's just bull… that's just wrong, Dad! You guys can't just kick Mado out! Where would she go?" Mishi looked over at the blonde girl sitting next to her, continuing, "Mado, I don't want you to have to go! I've really liked it with you staying here with us."

A small smile and a quiet, "Thank you, Mishi" was Madoka's reply. She continued to watch Gregory, wanting to hear what he had to say.

Gregory sipped his coffee then grimaced. "Well, I think it's bullshit. Especially given that she wouldn't even tell you, Mishi, that your friend, who supposedly needs a place to stay, has to get out right away. She wants _me_ to be the bad guy and for _you_ to be mad at _me_ because Madoka has to go."

"But Dad, that doesn't make any sense! Madoka is here because you met her and she needed a place to stay."

Gregory chuckled and grinned crookedly over at his daughter, "Ah, but that's not the story your Mom knows, remember? As far as she is concerned Madoka is your friend from school with the stalker boyfriend."

Mishi literally facepalmed at the reminder and groaned, "Oh my Lord! For some reason I had completely forgotten that, Dad! You're right, that makes it even more wrong! She could at least tell me herself."

"Yeah, well, I'm afraid both of you are getting pulled into the middle of something that really isn't about you. Karen is pissed at me or unhappy with me or Japan or her job or… something. Madoka being here was the straw but not the entire problem."

"What do you mean, Dad? I thought you and Mom got along well."

Gregory took a drag on his cigarette and glanced over at Madoka, who was still quietly sitting, watching him with her sky-blue eyes, inscrutable behind her perfect beauty. He exhaled slowly then answered, "I thought so too, more or less. But I guess not. Sweetie… there's no way for anyone outside a husband and wife to ever understand what is going on with a marriage. Even _they_ might not understand, like now. Karen and I haven't been real close for a long while, Mishi. Not like what _you_ would think of as close."

Mishi just shrugged with an unhappy look on her face, which Gregory figured meant Mishi thought he just wasn't telling her what the problems really were. He _could_ tell her again and in different ways that he did not really know, but he knew it would not help.

"I just wanted you two to know what was up; when Karen gets home it's entirely possible she'll blow a gasket about me not doing what she ordered me to do, namely kicking Madoka out onto the streets with no warning at all." Gregory scowled at even the idea and at his wife's gall. "If she does then there is a motel not far from here which is nice enough for a few nights, Madoka. I'd rather you stay here with us, but at the same time I would hate for you to be stuck in the middle of a domestic fight that isn't your problem. If I give you the sign, I want you to slip out and just go on down to the motel. I don't want you here being a lightning rod for Karen's temper. By the same token, Mishi, if that all happens, please, just shut your bedroom door and let me try to deal with it. Don't get involved, please."

Gregory also worried, a great deal, about that look he had noticed on Madoka's face Monday evening at dinner, when Karen had pitched a fit and stomped away from the table. He did _not_ want to find out that Sekirei happened to fly into killing rages if someone threw a teacup at their Ashikabi's head.

Just, you know, for instance.

Mishi narrowed her eyes, and then turned to look at her blonde friend, "Do you have money for a hotel room, Mado? I'm sure we could help…"

Madoka nodded her head in answer. "Money is not a problem, Mishi. I received replacements for my identification and my credit card."

"Oh. I didn't know." Mishi looked surprised that she had been left out of that bit of news, but rallied gamely anyway. "I wouldn't want you to have to go live in a hotel all alone! I like you staying here and what would you do if you were all alone at a hotel? If you have to leave for the night I could go with you!"

" _And Mishi must involve herself in the drama,"_ Gregory thought to himself. _"Then again, she has been sleeping snuggled up to Madoka for over a week. I'd not want to just let that go either I suppose. It's probably really really easy to get used to snuggling with Mado."_ Gregory suppressed a grin and shook his head, "Mishi, that's a kind gesture, but you slipping out with Mado would go straight to your Mom screaming at _me_ about hiding _you_ from her. Or some other sort of overreaction. If it comes to a loud argument here, just let Mado slip out. She won't be disappearing forever, just overnight."

Gregory realized Mishi was about to get into questions neither he nor Madoka wanted to have to answer, like questions about Madoka's long-term plans. He moved to wrap up the conversation before Mishi could rally an argument against his veto. "We'll call the motel down the street, reserve a room, so if things get … difficult here tonight Mado will have a place to sleep for the night without worry. A contingency plan, okay? I'd rather her stay with us until after the New Year, and _then_ worry about longer term plans. That sound good?"

Mishi looked at Madoka to see what she thought. Gregory could tell his sixteen-year-old daughter was unhappy about the now-obvious fractures in her parents' relationship, especially as all this was catching her by surprise, out of the blue. She was also excited about being treated like a real person instead of like a child. Gregory knew this kind of thing fed her drama-seeking side. Not a nice trait, but he tried to be honest about his children's natures, positive and negative, at least to himself. And Mishi, darling wonderful daughter that she was, _was_ a complete drama queen.

Madoka looked at Gregory through her long lashes, her eyes narrowed. She answered, "If you think that is best, then I am sure it is, Gregory. I too would prefer to stay here but at the same time I dislike that I have caused such trouble for you."

Gregory shook his head, "You didn't really cause it, Mado. The straw that breaks the camel's back isn't _really_ to blame." He took another drag on his cigarette then blew out the smoke, then rubbed his forehead, closing his eyes.

"It's all the other shit piled up on the camel's back that's really at fault."

o.0.O.0.o

o.0.O.0.o

An hour later, Madoka's soft voice caught Gregory's attention as he was sorting through recent photos on his computer. He had a surprisingly large number of really good photos of Madoka.

"Gregory, may I ask a question? A question that is probably rude, possibly an invasion of your privacy?"

He partially turned in his desk chair, his arm now draped across the back, to face his Sekirei where she was sitting on the couch, having been reading on one of the tablets. Gregory answered her, "Sure, Mado. Anything. Mishi's out with Tomo, so we can talk freely. And I promise you, no question you will ever ask me will offend me. I might not answer, but you can always ask me, anything."

Madoka pursed her lips and her brows drew downwards in a frown. "Very well, thank you, Gregory. I understand you would like me to leave the apartment and be out of the way in case Karen starts a big fight with you when she comes home. A fight caused because you will not tell me to leave and never return, which is what Karen wishes."

The beautiful young woman turned to meet Gregory's gaze, brow still furrowed and both hands stuffed into the pockets of her grey hoodie. "I will do as you wish, my Ashikabi, but _only_ if you will tell me, honestly and truly, what a 'domestic fight', as you called it, involves."

She held up a hand to forestall his answer for a moment, "Gregory, please understand that almost everything I know about Japanese home life was learned from television programs, movies, anime, and manga. I also watched a lot of American television and read some American novels, as I selected American English as my secondary language. But I recognize now that my understanding of even Japanese life is very limited and my understanding of how an American family lives is almost zero. So I do not know _exactly_ what you mean when you talk of a fight with your wife."

In a moment of clarity, Gregory realized Madoka was _concerned_ for him. For his actual physical safety! Before he could laugh off the misunderstanding, he made himself stop and consider what the situation must look like from Madoka's point of view. Words like "fight" certainly had quite a broad range of definitions; he could not blame Madoka for perhaps overestimating the danger of Karen's imminent return from work.

"Thank you for being concerned for me, Madoka." Gregory gave the girl a smile and turned his desk chair around to face her completely, to give her his undivided attention. "The sort of 'fight' that is the most likely would only involve loud words, cursing, perhaps one or both parties saying angry, even hurtful things, to the other. Perhaps it would go as far as something fragile and breakable being picked up and thrown against a wall in anger, like a… coffee cup or a saucer. People tend to find breaking the china to be an effective stress reliever when they are emotionally wound up."

Madoka did not respond to the mild attempt at humor, but her frown did ease a little. She chewed on her lower lip absently and responded, "So there is no danger of anyone being physically hurt or danger of an escalation beyond angry words and perhaps someone maybe throwing a vase at a wall?"

"Just so. Um, though domestic disputes _can_ escalate dramatically; the police hate having to go out on calls when the problem is a husband and wife in a fight. Any time high emotions are in play a situation can go dangerously bad very quickly and there are few situations you will live in where 'high emotions' are going to bubble up more than with the people you've lived with for many many years." Gregory realized he probably was not reassuring the girl's worries and he cursed his tendency to being pedantic, so added, "But that's just in general, Mado. I'm not the sort of guy who loses his temper easily, and Karen might be prickly, even short tempered at times but she's not too likely to escalate this into something physically confrontational. A thrown coffee cup, at most."

Gregory pursed his own lips and looked to look towards the sunlight in the bare trees, just beyond the closed patio door and the patio fence. "Frankly, I don't think Karen cares enough about me any more to really go crazy about this. I know that probably sounds counter-intuitive, that someone who cares less is less likely to get out of control angry. But keep in mind, the dangerous situations are the ones where people's most powerful emotions are agitated and involved, and I don't think Karen has had 'powerful emotions' about me or our marriage in quite a while. So, it's probably fine, you don't have any reason to worry."

Madoka nodded her understanding. Gregory could tell by the look on her face that she was now reassured that she was not running out on Gregory and leaving him to face mortal danger alone. But she still looked unhappy about the way he had described the situation.

Gregory could understand that. He too was unhappy about the way he had described the situation.

o.0.O.0.o

o.0.O.0.o

At 5pm, Madoka was sitting at Gregory's computer desk in the living room, watching a video. Gregory had shown her how to navigate the desktop system well enough to get to the web and search for what subjects might interest her. From his seat on the couch, it appeared that she was watching a video about how to wear make-up. He couldn't tell for sure. She was engrossed in the subject, whatever it was, which is why he had shown her how to watch videos on the much larger screen of his big desktop system, as opposed to the small screen on her new phone. He _had_ asked her to watch those videos at the desk instead of having them cast up onto the big wall monitor-television. _He_ did not care to watch videos about the proper method of applying mascara.

He was taking notes in his black A4 notebook with an ink pen, ambient music playing in his earbuds at a low volume. Considering all of the electronic gadgetry at hand, Madoka had found it odd for him to continue keeping notes in a paper notebook by hand and she had asked Gregory about that very issue earlier. "I already think of that spiral notebook as a part of you, Gregory; you have been using it for your note keeping since the night I told you the truth about me, in your classroom after school. But why do you not keep your notes using one of the high tech devices you have around here?"

He had answered, "No matter how careful you are, there's no way to be sure what you are inputting on a computer or tablet or phone is secure. I know that everything I write in this notebook is completely safe from remote computer hackery by MBI or anyone else. Someone could steal it or I could lose it, but all things considered I find those risks less likely than the more high-tech risks I'd be facing if I kept my notes electronically. It is also more secure in the sense that it's unlikely someone could steal my notebook without me realizing it, whereas they could copy a digital file on my computer and make off with it and I'd never be aware." He chuckled ruefully, "Rarely does anyone have _reason_ to be paranoid about their information, but in the case of MBI and our information on the Sekirei… better safe than sorry, I figure."

So he was writing with his pen in the Notebook. Tonight it had been notes on all of the Sekirei who Madoka had been able to remember from her years in the MBI Sekirei Labs. Their names, numbers, appearance, demeanor, powers, who they were friendly with, who they didn't like, any unusual situations they'd been involved in. Madoka had far more in her head about the Sekirei and the MBI Administration and Research personnel than she had thought she had, all of it coming out in bits and pieces as Gregory methodically questioned her about the other Sekirei.

He had basic summaries about 36 different Sekirei now. That left 71 others, _and_ number 01, about whom they had no information. Madoka knew of no one who had ever admitted to having seen or met 01 and she had only the rumors and outright mythology spread among the young Sekirei about the savior figure 01. They also had the reasonable inference that there was a 01 due to how unlikely it was that any numbering system would start at 02. Gregory considered this lack of information about Sekirei 01 a serious problem that they should address if it was at all possible. "Madoka, she is the _power_ that the Kouten installed upon your colony ship to keep what is happening to you Sekirei from happening. Sekirei 01 would be uniquely qualified, in both power and knowledge, to stop this madness and correct the harm that has already been done. All of our own strategies for surviving the Sekirei Plan and our plans for how to counter various elements of MBI and the opposition Ashikabi would be needless, if we could simply find a living Sekirei 01. If we could free her from whatever is preventing her from doing what she was meant to do, namely protecting and shepherding the 107 Sekirei to success in their mission. That she is a ghost to us is distressing and it's something I would very much like to correct."

Gregory paused in reviewing his notes, glancing at his cell watch, seeing that it was time for Karen to be leaving her office; she would be home in about an hour. His stomach got butterflies at the thought, which in turn irritated him. Thinking of his wife coming home gave him butterflies of anxiety in his gut? This was completely unacceptable; one way or another this was going to be resolved. Gregory was _not_ going to live like this any longer if he could do anything about it.

"Dad?" Mishi's hesitant voice called to him from the hallway. She walked into the living room, holding her phone up, "Mom just texted me and asked if you had talked to me about anything important today. Why is she beating around the bush? What should I tell her?"

Gregory set down his pen along the spiral of the Notebook and then rubbed his forehead. Of _course_ Karen was going to question Mishi instead of simply calling or texting him. He saw that Madoka had paused her video and had turned around in the desk chair to face him and Mishi.

Closing his eyes and attempting to keep his temper in check, Gregory answered, "Well, Mishi dear, if I had to guess at what your mom is up to, she probably wants to know if I told you that your friend Madoka has to get out today, like Karen ordered me to do, last night. But she can't come out and ask you 'did Gregory throw that girl out today or not', as that would give away to you that this is something Karen is pushing for, and she doesn't want that, she wants you to be mad at me, for kicking your friend out onto the street. As I have not and am following her orders, I am not telling you that your friend Madoka has to get out today, you should probably just tell her no; I've not spoken to you about anything important."

Again, the butterflies made themselves known in Gregory's stomach, as Mishi tapped out her reply to Karen. Gregory made a mental note that communication through Mishi was petty bullshit and it was _not_ going to happen again, at least on his part. If Karen wanted to know what he was doing or not doing she should ask _him_. It was not fair to Mishi for either of them to be using her as some kind of proxy.

"Mom says she's staying at Miss Hashimoto's tonight."

Gregory stared at Mishi, who returned the look with a pensive expression of her own. He blurted out, "Really?" Recovering from his surprise quickly, Gregory shook his head and continued, "No, never mind, Mishi. Thank you for letting me know. I'll talk to your Mom myself if I have questions for her. And, Mishi, dear, please, if she asks you again about me or tries to get you to say something to me, any of this," Gregory waved his hands vaguely towards Mishi's phone, "please feel free to tell her she can email me, text me, call me, herself. I don't want you feeling like you have to be in the middle sending messages back and forth, okay?"

"You know it's not that easy, Dad."

Gregory nodded his understanding and added, "Sweetie, you've got the right to not be made into a tool for either your mom or me to use against the other. I promise you, with complete sincerity, that I will not intentionally channel my communications with Karen through you or your brother. If I forget and try to talk to Karen through you, you point out to me that I'm doing it and tell me no. I mean it, Mishi." Gregory held up a hand and pointed at Mishi, "Now if you _chose_ to pass messages from your mom to me because, I don't know, maybe it's easier for you than arguing about it with her or it causes you less trouble, that's fine. But whatever you do in this… situation… make sure you are doing it because it's your call, not because you feel pressured or obliged."

Gregory stood up from the couch and stepped over to give his daughter a bear hug, squeezing her against his chest. Demonstrations of affection did not come naturally to Gregory; it simply wasn't how he was raised. But after the birth of his first child, Mark, and then reinforced with the arrival of Mishi several years later, Gregory had made the deliberate resolution to never short change his children when it came to hugs, kisses, and clear declarations of his love for them.

Mishi hugged him back, holding on a bit longer than was her usual tendency. She _was_ upset. But she had inherited his emotional reserve instead of her mother's short fuse and fiery demeanor. When it came to matters of real significance, Mishi was downright aloof. Gregory figured it was quite likely that was how people saw him, too.

Gregory savored the unique feel of a sincere hug from his daughter. Her arms squeezed around his middle and her head nodded understanding, her cheek pressed against his chest.

"Thank you. I love you, daddy."

"Sure, sweetie. I love you too."

After Mishi retreated to her room and shut the door behind her, Gregory turned and noticed Madoka was watching him. He frowned, then met his Sekirei's serious blue-eyed gaze. "I'm sorry, Madoka. I really am."

She tilted her head slightly, as she tended to do when puzzled. "For what, Gregory?"

He shrugged and gestured vaguely with his hands, "I'm sorry those you didn't have a dad. Or a mom. Even if it might look like marriage and family is a lot of trouble, it really is the best thing ever. I'd not trade a single 'I love you, daddy' from my daughter for all of the tea in China, or for all the gold in Fort Knox. It's not fair that those bastards at MBI did not provide you with loving parents. Dads and Moms are the people who you can always count on to love you, unconditionally."

Madoka continued to silently study him, wearing that quizzical expression on her lovely face. She didn't reply.

Gregory slumped back onto the couch and returned to the Notebook. He needed to focus on something else or he was going to start drinking scotch and he'd promised himself tonight was scotch free. "Okay Mado, let's develop nomenclature. Just calling this stuff 'powers' is going to drive me crazy. Really, it will, it will drive me absolutely batshit. Are you sure no one at MBI ever used repeated terms for the Sekirei abilities? Or did you ever hear them describe a conceptual framework? That's really where we need to start…"

o.0.O.0.o

o.0.O.0.o

It was late, past midnight, and Madoka was beginning to tire. Not physically, since she had spent the entire Friday just sitting about the apartment reading and talking with Gregory and Mishi, other than this morning's short yet orgasmic trip to the grocery. But the tension in the O'Donnell home was taking a toll on all of them, especially Madoka. This was not an environment or circumstance she was used to; it had stresses, anxieties, and worries that were greatly different from those she had grown up with in the MBI Sekirei Labs.

She understood, now, that what coping skills she had developed for dealing with the very specific world of the MBI Sekirei Labs would likely be almost worthless in most situations she'd find herself in, for the rest of her life.

She _had_ , however, tried to at least distract herself this evening, and Mishi and Gregory as well, from the persistent tension they were all experiencing. With quite a bit of success, she admitted.

Madoka was daringly wearing her sleeping clothes while sitting in the living room with Gregory. The thin short shorts and the teal cotton tank top she had borrowed from Mishi back on her first night with the O'Donnell's were comfortable but wearing such clothes in front of her Ashikabi was bolder than she had ever been before.

Not wearing anything under the shorts added a whole new level of daring as well.

Her bare legs were tucked up beside her as she sat on the comfortable couch. The tablet she had been reading was lying, ignored, in her lap, and she realized she had been watching her Ashikabi for several minutes.

Early in the evening Madoka had found a fun way to cheat in the ongoing game between her and Gregory, a game he wasn't even consciously aware they were playing. The game in which _he_ kept trying to avoid getting caught looking at _her_ body (or outright leering at her on occasion) when he thought she couldn't see what he was focusing his attention on.

She found she could _cheat_ by closing her eyes and focusing on her Farsight so she could see Gregory checking her out when he thought she was looking the other way. When she would break out in a grin and Gregory asked her what was so funny she would answer "Nothing!"

Madoka was learning all sorts of things about what drew her Ashikabi's eyes and was developing a theory that he was a bit of a pervert.

Not a pervert in the sense most people used the word these days. Gregory had gone on for 15 straight minutes earlier in the evening when Madoka had, all innocent and unknowing, used the word "pervert" as a synonym for "guy who likes looking at pretty girls".

Mishi had started waving her hands warningly but it was too late, Gregory had already overheard and then launched into what was obviously a well-practiced rant about how the word "pervert" does not mean "guy who likes sex" or "guy who likes looking at girls", or any of the other ways the word was _perverted_ in its meaning these days.

He waxed almost poetic about the corruption of the language and about how it had only taken _one_ idiot Japanese-to-English translator, forty years ago, to misapply "pervert" to a manga he was being paid to translate for the American market. The usage guide the translator had been working from had that word as one of the usable terms for "dirty old man who likes looking at underage girls", or, just "dirty old man" (which _was_ a marginally acceptable translation, Gregory had to admit, as it was not and is not socially acceptable for a much older man to outright ogle _legally underage_ young women).

 _But!_ That idiot translator _then_ went and applied the word to " _any_ man who ogles young women", not just _dirty old men_! Then it began to be applied to "any man who demonstrates a desire for sex" and "anyone male _or female_ who demonstrates a desire for sex". Now, forty years later, every time someone in Japan shows a healthy interest in the opposite gender (or the same gender, for that matter) they are labeled a _pervert,_ i.e., someone who is demonstrating a _sexual perversion_.

"Wanting sex isn't a sexual perversion! Looking at pretty girls is not a sexual perversion! Looking at pretty guys isn't either, if that's your thing." By this point in the diatribe, Gregory had been pacing back and forth across the living room, gesticulating wildly with both arms, with Mishi and Madoka as his silent, horrified, audience. Well, Madoka was much less horrified than Mishi, who hated to hear her father talk about _anything_ that had even a remote connection to sex.

Mishi obviously knew this speech by heart already, which was why she had tried _desperately_ to wave Madoka off when Madoka had referred to a guy as a pervert for leering at her and Mishi. Madoka realized she would be willing to pay good money to have been a witness to the times Gregory went off on this rant to one of Mishi's boyfriends, or in the presence of one of Mishi's girlfriends from school, something Madoka was now convinced _must_ have happened, at least once, in the past.

Gregory was far too much the dedicated linguistic academic to let mere social propriety hold him back from lecturing an audience on correct word usage, especially if that social propriety was only there to keep him from embarrassing his daughter. Then it was almost a bonus!

"A pervert is someone who can't enjoy regular healthy sex; they have to have unusual, deviant, circumstances and kinks in order to get off!" Mishi groaned and buried her hands in her face at that. Gregory continued, unaware (or perhaps uncaring) of how he was amusing his Sekirei and mortifying his teenage daughter, "Unless someone's sexual behavior is truly deviant, truly degenerate, truly depraved, they are not a pervert! Pedophiles are perverts because pre-pubescent children are not healthy targets for sexual desire! Fetishists are often perverts, because if you can only get off by fapping with women's shoes on each hand, you are a pervert! Sadists are perverts! Someone who can _only_ get off while peeping on unaware women is a pervert!"

"It's _not,_ however _,_ perverted to like looking at pretty girls! Clothed, naked, or in any other state! It's **_normal_** _!_ "

Mishi had fled to bed not long after Gregory wrapped up his Pervert Rant, to Madoka's great amusement. Madoka considered this only fair, it was payback for the many times Mishi had utterly embarrassed Madoka in the early days of their friendship, when Mishi's bold, deliberate, talk of sex and body parts would inevitably cause Madoka to blush and stammer.

Happily, Mishi's new desire to be in a totally separate room from her Dad for the next ten years _did_ give Gregory and Madoka the privacy needed for talking about the Sekirei and MBI.

This also gave an excuse for Madoka to change into the aforementioned very skimpy sleepwear and put an innocent face on wanting to "comfortably" lounge around the living room with her Ashikabi. And while helping herself to most of a bottle of white wine over the course of the evening.

And yes, she'd noticed he _was_ a bit of a pervert, mostly by trial and error and by using her Farsight to cheat and observe Gregory's eyes and his attention when she was not facing him, when he _thought_ he was safe to look as much as he wanted at whatever he wanted.

She labeled him a bit of a pervert because she now suspected that her Ashikabi was more stimulated by accidental or incidental views of forbidden skin than by a full view of nakedness deliberately granted. Not that he hadn't appreciated the deliberate show of her breasts the other night, but he _initially_ had thought he was peeping on her, unaware, and that was more stimulating than if she had simply removed her shirt for him with him being fully aware of her intent.

So, she'd spent the last couple of hours lounging in her very skimpy clothes, sharing the couch with Gregory and "innocently" letting the fabric of her shorts expose glimpses of what they covered, and "innocently" ignoring her erect nipples poking out from the cotton tank top like diamond bits. When she had "innocently and absent-mindedly" used her tablet's stylus to rub a spot between her legs under the shorts, which had developed a slight itch, Gregory almost fell completely off the couch.

It took every bit of self-control Madoka had to keep from grinning ear to ear. She ended up resorting to using her Healing ability to try to lock her facial muscles into a blank expression just to keep from giving herself away.

This was fun!

o.0.O.0.o

o.0.O.0.o

On the serious business of MBI and the Sekirei Plan, the last few discussions they'd had were focused on the more-than-human abilities Madoka had, those that she had witnessed, and those she had heard rumor of. Gregory was insistent on coming up with proper names for everything and even though he made an effort to explain why he felt this was important, Madoka still considered it a bit of a waste of energy.

MBI did not bother with this sort of thing and _they_ were scientists and researchers who had been studying the Sekirei for twenty years. If they didn't think it was important to come up with an actual name for what Madoka could do other than "healing" then she tended to agree with them.

But it was important to her Ashikabi, so even if she didn't get it, she tried her best to cooperate. Even though wracking her memory for every little detail from her years in the MBI Sekirei Labs was difficult and frustrating, particularly with Gregory directing the questions. He had the most amazing ability to remain focused on a line of questioning. This ability was also _incredibly_ irritating! If she wandered off topic or answered a question he had not actually asked, he immediately realized it and returned the discussion back to the point he wanted. Prevaricating when Gregory was questioning you on a subject was damn near impossible, as Madoka had found out.

He was nice about it. _Kind_ even. But he didn't let you weasel out of at least telling _yourself_ the truth.

After Mishi had retreated to her room, she and Gregory spent the evening, back and forth between the living room and the patio, coming up with names for the different Sekirei abilities, which did not take nearly as long as she'd thought it would. _Farsense_ , _Creativity_ , _Psychokinesis_ , _Redaction_ , _Coercion_ , dozens of sub-categories and time spent explaining how various Sekirei abilities Madoka had witnessed could fit into the new Metapsychic categories. It was kind of fun, really. There was a sense that they were doing something that a hundred years from now people would still be influenced by. A feeling that there would be this idealized future society with colleges of metapsychics exploring the inner and outer worlds to a greater degree than anyone before, and they would be using the terms and ideas that she and Gregory were putting down on paper this night.

But that only took about an hour, as Gregory already had a great deal of the preliminary work done on building a nomenclature for the Sekirei and Ashikabi. He said he had simply gone through a dozen science fiction authors, as well as computer games and comic books, and stole everything that seemed to fit their situation. Madoka thought that the idea of high-minded super metapsychics in the future using their nomenclature, which they stole from comic books, was the funniest thing she had heard in forever.

What they spent the rest of their night on was reviewing Madoka's past in the MBI Sekirei Labs, quickly deciding to focus on her adolescence and the facts of her Post-Pubescent Group 11 life. She ended up sharing far more about her relationship with 16 Toyotama and the motivations behind it than she had intended. There was so much information Gregory managed to get from her that he resorted to recording their discussion and dialogue as audio files on his phone and her phone (always best to have two master copies of raw data, Gregory insisted) to make sure his ink pen on spiral notebook note taking did not contain any grievous errors.

Madoka learned new things about herself by the time Gregory was finished questioning her about her and her onee-sama. New things about herself that she did not particularly like.

Madoka sensed disapproval from Gregory, coming across the connection they shared as Sekirei and Ashikabi. This disapproval grew as he extracted more and more information about her life after her Puberty Adjustments. He questioned her about and took notes on why she had initiated her relationship with number 16, what methods she used to endear herself to Toyotama, why Madoka felt she needed a literal bodyguard to protect her from the other Sekirei in Group 11.

Gregory was not happy as he continued to gather more information about the nature of her relationship with Toyotama, details about how often or how rarely Madoka actually desired to do what they did together. How often did she engage in sex play with Toyotama or Ichi-chan because they wanted to, and since they wanted it Madoka made sure she was there to provide what was desired, and so that Madoka would be wanted and appreciated and valued.

Madoka started to see that she had allowed Toyotama to do whatever Toyotama wanted to do to Madoka's body and then Madoka perceived "reciprocation" as Madoka then doing to Toyotama's body what Toyotama wanted done.

When _true_ reciprocation would have been them doing what _Madoka_ wanted. But Madoka's wants were never a part of any equation, and somehow Madoka had never notice this.

Madoka had made everything about what Toyotama wanted; whether it was what Toyotama was doing to Madoka, or what Madoka was doing to Toyotama. How could she not have seen this?

She couldn't even blame her onee-sama. If Madoka herself did not recognize the one-sided nature of the relationship, a relationship that _Madoka_ had courted and that _Madoka_ had defined in almost all of its particulars, then it was pretty unlikely that Toyotama was ever aware of how grossly unbalanced their relationship had been. On the other hand, Toyotama had perhaps assumed, _reasonably_ assumed, that Madoka had set things up exactly as Madoka wanted them.

Madoka was the one who declared that Toyotama was her "onee-sama". Toyotama might have been happy with a less deferential, less submissive, girlfriend. Madoka would probably never know, but the thought had never occurred to her, in the Labs. The nature of her relationship with Toyotama was very specific and it had sprung into existence in all of its particulars almost spontaneously, and Madoka had implemented the relationship exactly as it had manifested in her mind.

There was a lot more to her relationship with Toyotama that Madoka needed to spend time thinking about. More than she had ever suspected. Before she could lay her past to rest and move on with her life, she would have to spend time reviewing this important part of her past. If she was still alive by the end of summer, she promised herself she would dedicate whatever time and effort it took to settle this upsetting history she'd not even realized she'd been carrying.

Gregory had been the one who extracted these truths from her, bit by bit, over the course of several hours. And while she could tell he was unhappy and that he disapproved, she could not tell what exactly it was he was unhappy about or what he disapproved of.

Perhaps he thought girl+girl relationships were wrong? Or maybe he did not like the idea that his Sekirei was intimate with someone before meeting him? There was a lot of talk in the dorms about remaining "pure" for your Ashikabi. But the general acceptance was that only meant avoiding girl+boy sex! But maybe that was wrong? Oh no, what it that was it?

Maybe he did not like that Madoka was so inferior in the relationship with Toyotama? Or that there were Sekirei who would take advantage of his Sekirei before he could be there to protect her?

It was confusing and frustrating for Madoka, knowing her Ashikabi was feeling clear emotions of disapproval, even anger, but not knowing what it was she'd done to cause those emotions and thus not being able to tell what to do to make them stop. She could not pick up the _cause_ of his very obvious emotions, at all, and that was going to drive her mad!

His face never changed expression from his usual study-research look, the intense brows drawn down over sharp green eyes, his somewhat thick lips pursed, all of it made for Gregory's look of concentration, what he usually wore while writing in the Notebook and asking her questions.

This untenable state of affairs caused her to return to prevaricating, which was pointless and accomplished nothing except frustrating her that much more. Gregory was going to get his answers, unless she flat out told him _no_.

He _had_ told her at the start that if she did not want to answer something, she had the right to tell him flat out, "no, I do not want to answer that question". She had stupidly declared immediately that she had no reason to hide anything at all from her Ashikabi and she would never deny him an answer to any question he might have. If he liked, she would describe in detail every sexual encounter she and Toyotama ever had!

And while that declaration had caused her Ashikabi to sputter and even blush, she soon regretted having painted herself into a corner. Now she _had_ to answer; now she couldn't use his freely offered escape hatch. Because she had so adamantly insisted she never would, before she realized just how uncomfortable some of the truths were that Gregory was uncovering.

Eventually the subject shifted away from her relationships and began delving into what she remembered of MBI's actual tests of the Sekirei and their studies of their abilities, Gregory spent a lot of his time shaking his head at how little MBI seemed to actually study the Sekirei's powers. Madoka told him she did not think MBI even knew about Farsense. Or maybe they knew that some of the Sekirei could see around corners and some could whisper to another Sekirei without using their voices, but they never listed any of the Farsense abilities on evaluations, it was never asked about in interviews or during Adjustments, it was simply a non-issue in the MBI Sekirei Labs. The Farsense metafaculty seemed to not interest MBI at all, which baffled Gregory intensely, considering the possible application in corporate espionage for MBI's benefit, at the _very_ least. And what about science for the sake of science? How does any scientist worth the title just ignore _demonstrable clairvoyance_? It was mind-boggling. What _did_ all of those Researchers and Lab Techs spend all these years _doing_?

If it did not have to do with fighting, specifically one on one formalized duels between Sekirei, it seemed MBI did not care about it. And that distressed Gregory greatly.

By the time midnight had rolled around, Madoka was of the opinion he should have gone into interrogation instead of teaching.

Now he was writing in the Notebook, sitting at the other end of the couch, illuminated by a table lamp. Madoka studied his face in profile, noting the fatigue that showed itself in lines around his eyes and his mouth. Fatigue or stress; it was hard for her to say which.

He had a very prominent nose. It was straight, not hooked, and kind of shaped like a triangle in profile. Was it a big nose or a strong nose? She wondered which of those two she would have used to describe it two weeks ago and which she would use today.

Gregory had asked her earlier that evening to start keeping a journal of sorts, on her phone if she liked, on paper if she preferred. She liked tapping stuff out on her phone; it gave her practice with the little keypad and she envied Mishi her amazing speed and accuracy in texting. Gregory had asked her to write down the things she felt. Especially how she felt last week, before her winging, to the best of her memory. She was a little reluctant to do so, and he could tell, so he assured her that whatever she wrote in the journal he would not be reading, but instead his "research assistant" would be going over those notes. The only way he would see those notes would be if she and his research assistant agreed he should see them at a later date.

He did not have a research assistant, Madoka promptly pointed out.

He laughed and kept making notes in his Notebook. "I will. You can bet your sweet ass on that, Mado. I will."

She enjoyed the warmth in her belly that came from her Ashikabi calling her ass "sweet". She also realized he meant that he may not have an assistant today, but the work he was doing would need one someday so that person would be who was reviewing what she might write. He explained that this was so she would feel free to be more honest in what she recorded and he stressed how important that was.

He took her by the hand, looked into her eyes, and earnestly asked her to write down everything she could remember, even things that she didn't like to admit now, things she might think would upset him or Mishi or anyone else, whatever it was she thought and felt before winging, _write it down_.

So she had just finished methodically tapping out everything she remembered of her thoughts about Gregory O'Donnell. She'd had to erase what she had typed several times, realizing she had been whitewashing the truth without realizing it, something Gregory warned her would likely happen. She made a real effort to write the blunt, hard, truth, exactly as she remembered it.

She looked, now, at the face of her Ashikabi, back lit by the lamp near the couch. He was focused and intent on what he was writing in the Notebook, unaware of her studying his features. The feelings and opinions she had two weeks ago when she first met Gregory O'Donnell were now newly refreshed in her memory, so she studied the face that she had looked at two weeks ago and had then immediately categorized as "old American guy", as "another old pervert", because he had been staring at her face. She remembered being relieved when he had finally turned his eyes away from her.

She had made a note that now, two weeks later, she felt cold and a bit lonely any time those same green eyes were _not_ looking her way.

  
She also had some kinda first-hand/second-hand understanding of why he might stare at her face, having now seen what her face looked like through his eyes. At least, a fantasy-memory of her face. _Now_ she was more inclined to wonder at how he could ever _stop_ looking rather than wonder why he was looking in the first place.

Now when she looked at him she still saw the lines on his face, but now those lines and fine creases meant worry for his family and for her. She still _saw_ the slightly saggy skin along his jawline but now she did not _care_ about it. She saw the thin hair atop his head and the hairline that was well back from his high forehead but it no longer seemed to matter. Now it was just Gregory's slightly greying, receding, blond hair. Before, it had been a big red sign blinking "old guy, old guy, disqualified, avoid".

Her eyes lingered on his lips, again observing that they were a bit large for a man's lips, almost pouty. She did not think he would appreciate that description, which thought made her grin. She thought about how his lips felt on hers.

She gave a start when he slapped the Notebook shut then turned to look at her. He gave her that crooked grin he had, and said, "Really, it's late, we'd all best get off to bed, Mado. Tomorrow is Saturday so in the morning I have my English as a Second Language Course. If you want to get a ride with me, get up early. If you want to stay here with Mishi instead, that's alright too. Though, between you and me, I expect she intends on smuggling Tomo over tomorrow morning while I'm off at Saturday school and since Karen is wherever Karen is. So it might be uncomfortable here for you as the two of them likely intend on private time in the bedroom. Me, I just pretend that she is cleverly fooling me. Oh, and for the love of God remind me we need to put some time aside to do some detailed tests on your Farsense metafaculty, okay?"

" _Tomorrow is the two week anniversary of when I met you,"_ the thought drifted through Madoka's tired mind. "Okay, Gregory. And I will catch a ride with you, yes. It will give me a chance to get out of the apartment and I need to try to get word back to the MBI Sekirei Labs, to Yosuga, so I will be working on that tomorrow."

"Okay, but be careful, Mado."

"Of course! And you promise we will stop for donuts, yes? Before your class?" She stood from the couch, being careful to be _subtle_ about posing in her very-barely-there sleep clothing. She collected her phone and put the tablet away, up on the shelf over the computer desk, where it belonged. Well, maybe stretching up on her tip toes as high as she could reach in order to put the tablet away was a _little_ obvious.

Turning towards the bedroom, she looked out of the side of her eye to see the effect she'd had on her Ashikabi.

Totally worth it.

o.0.O.0.o

o.0.O.0.o

Saturday 28 December, 2019

By noon the next day, when Gregory finished his Saturday ESL class, a steady rain had settled in over Shin Tokyo. The weather app on his cell-watch told him it would likely continue through Sunday morning and a glance outside at the dull grey skies confirmed that as a good bet.

As he left the classroom that was set aside for Saturday adult education classes Gregory noticed that his pretty little Sekirei was waiting for him in the hallway. "Hello, Mado-chan. Riding back to the apartment with me then?"

"Yes, please, Gregory-kun. It is a little bit rainy outside." Madoka gave him her slight, reserved, smile (so very different from her " _10,000 watt Resistance Is Futile_ ®"smile, but still lovely) then fell into step beside him as they walked towards the double doors of the main entrance for the school. It was dim in the school's hallway, with only every fourth overhead light turned on and the glass doors at the end letting in only a little light, thanks to the rainstorm. Gregory carried his briefcase in his left hand; his right was resting in his pants pocket, which provided a convenient elbow for Madoka to grasp as she walked closely alongside him on his right.

Without conscious thought, and as soon as Madoka took his arm, Gregory shortened his normally long strides and Madoka lengthened her steps. Neither noticed their immediate synchronicity.

They walked in silence down the long corridor. Once at the doors, Gregory nodded to the security guard who was at his desk nearby and held the door for Madoka. The rain was really coming down. The covered walkway that led towards the parking lot was, thankfully, wide enough to keep them dry as Madoka took Gregory's arm again and the two of them slowly walked.

"Any luck coming up with a way to get word to your friend in the MBI Sekirei Labs?" Gregory asked.

Madoka nodded her head, even the damp air was unable to keep her thick blonde hair from swinging about. "I hope so. I had the full names of two of the lab techs who worked in the Group 11 dorms over this last year and I have been working on finding them. Today I finally found both of their phone numbers and contacted them. Hopefully at least one of the two will be kind enough to slip my cell number to Yosu-chan."

Gregory nodded, "That really is probably your best bet. Staking out MBI's downtown headquarters won't do any good, as the Sekirei are released all around the city and at random times. You know, Yosuga might already be released for all we know."

"Oh, I hope not, Gregory-kun. And with only three to six of us being released each week, and already two of us that I know of for sure having been released out of Group 11, three if we count 86 Katsuragi, we can hope Yosu-chan will be one of the later released Sekirei. All I can do is hope, I do not have any, what was the term you used... leverage? Yes, leverage, to apply to either of these young men, so I and Yosu-chan are completely dependent upon their good will. And good will was not a particularly valued trait in the MBI hiring processes, as far as we could ever tell."

Gregory could tell Madoka was putting a lot of hope into this, so he agreed easily. "It doesn't hurt to hope, Mado-chan. A positive attitude almost always helps and rarely hurts."

His gorgeous blonde Sekirei looked up at him, having to tilt her head back quite a bit to meet his eyes, and she smiled her radiant smile up at him, weakening his knees and setting his heart to racing, as it always did. "Exactly, Gregory-kun. A positive attitude. That is my motto now. I will have faith that we will find Yosu-chan and we will help her find her Ashikabi and she will avoid the terrible things that have happened to some of the Sekirei, out in the city."

Gregory smiled down at Madoka where she held onto his arm and replied, "Good! See, no reason to sulk about and assume the worst. And perhaps we could put our heads together and come up with more leverage for you to use than you think you have. You know, this project with trying to reach number 44 clearly illustrates how nice it would be if _we_ had some way to find just-released Sekirei. If we could contact them immediately upon their release from the MBI Sekirei Labs and warn them about all the things MBI is failing to educate them about, and help put them on the right path to finding their Ashikabi, it would save a lot of misery. God only knows how many have already been forcibly winged by bad men or who've had to accept an Ashikabi that was not the best match for them, like you had to, from simple, avoidable mistakes. Unforced errors, as they're called."

The two stopped walking, as they had reached the end of the covered walkway, at the back section of the school parking lot where Gregory parked the Jeep. Both were looking out into the heavy rain at the small, mostly empty, parking lot, Madoka's hand was still holding Gregory's right arm.

They stood quietly for a short time, both enjoying the sound of the steady downpour and the feeling that they were protected and sheltered, even if their shelter was only this 2 meter wide covered walkway, they both felt protected and sheltered in the others presence. Though it was unlikely either would describe it in those words, especially Gregory.

Madoka was looking at Gregory's orange Jeep and the two parking spots that he had to pay for, by the order of the school's facilities manager, in order to park it in the school's lot. The American sized vehicle was simply too large to fit easily in Japanese sized car slots. Madoka watched the heavy rain as it pooled atop the flat canvas roof of the unusual vehicle, then she spoke, softly, but easily heard by her Ashikabi. "Gregory-kun, I do not think it is the worst thing at all, being your Sekirei. Please do not think that I regret this fate or that I spend my time wishing that things could be different."

Gregory continued watching the rainstorm and considered Madoka's words carefully, both what she had said and what she had not. He doubted if she had felt so accepting of her fate, of her new Ashikabi, the night their bond had established, the night of her winging. He wondered if she had been told the day they met that he would end up being her Ashikabi, would Madoka be so accepting of her fate as she seemed now? He suspected she would not have been.

The vague outlines of a hypothesis had been coming together in his mind over the last couple of days; a hypothesis concerning the nature of the bond and what effects it had on the Sekirei. He still did not have it clear enough in his head to write it down but he felt that soon he might have enough data to start making some educated guesses.

As far as what Madoka had said, he understood that "do not think it is the worst thing" would probably be considered _damning with faint praise_ to a lot of people, but he thought he knew Madoka well enough now to hear her words for the kindness she very likely intended. It was true; _he_ regretted the necessity that tied Madoka to such a man as himself even as he confessed that he selfishly enjoyed the attention.

At least Madoka was trying to reassure him that she was not completely unhappy about how things had turned out.

"Wait here, Mado-chan. I'll go fetch the Jeep and pull it up next to the walkway here so you won't get soaked in the cold rain." Gregory handed her his briefcase. "Do please guard briefcase-san with great care. It would be tragic if he were to get soaked in this downpour."

His silliness was rewarded with Madoka's soft, reserved, laugh. "I will do so, Gregory-kun. Briefcase-san is safe with me."

o.0.O.0.o

o.0.O.0.o

Gregory stood at the small breakfast bar that separated the kitchen and the living room of the O'Donnell's apartment. The stack of photographs he had been flipping through was now just scattered about the bar top. The letter, typed and printed instead of handwritten, was in his hands. He was staring at it, though he had already read it through, twice.

The photos were all date stamped and the location of each clearly marked on the back. All of them featuring himself and Madoka at various places over the last two weeks; eating lunch, drinking coffee on the patio at Starbucks, even, shockingly, the two of them standing with her hand on the crook of his arm, under the covered walkway at the school, not one hour past. Gregory would bet that the private investigator Karen had obviously hired had been extremely disappointed to never catch him and Madoka at a Love Hotel or any other incriminating location, preferably some place he would get photos of a less than clothed Madoka in the midst of incriminating activities.

What were the odds that a 40-year-old husband of twenty years would _not_ be sleeping with the gorgeous idol-like girl with the DD tits, especially given that the two spend all their spare time together?

He wondered if Karen was disappointed that her private investigator had failed to get such photos? She probably was. She had very likely built up this entire picture in her mind of what had been going on behind her back and it was probably a bitter disappointment to her that her private investigator's best efforts were a photo of Madoka with her hand on the crook of Gregory's jacket covered elbow as he semi-escorted her along a wet, slippery, concrete walkway.

Gregory had no doubt that Karen was livid that that was the worst, the most "incriminating", photo they could acquire. Gregory's diaphragm muscle spasmed and air managed to croak past his throat. No one recognized the grotesque sound as a chuckle, not even Gregory's own subconscious, which had given the order.

"… _knew you were lying about her being Michelle's friend from school_ _…"_

"… _and there are_ _no record of any Sanjunana Madoka at Michelle's school_ _…"_

"… _for two weeks I gave you every chance to tell me the truth or to get her out of our home_ _."_

Yes, he could tell that Karen had unquestionably built up this story in her head of what was "really going on". Gregory felt bad about that. _Very_ bad. He couldn't even carry on an affair properly. No wonder Karen was finally sick to death of him.

It was _his_ damn fault that Karen had nothing significant to show for the efforts she'd made. She did everything right, hired the private investigator, told the fellow how to follow Gregory, where Gregory tended to be. Gregory should do something to fix at least that part of this.

" _You made it clear where your priorities are_ _…"_

"… _returning to New Hampshire. I will stay with my parents there until_ _…"_

A hot flash distracted Gregory badly, as it made cold sweat prickle his skin from head to toe.

His entire previous train of thought vanished from his mind entirely, just before he could put into action his plan of turning to Madoka and asking her to suck his dick for a photo he needed so he could fix his marriage.

His mind spun onward. Gregory realized he was starting to lose it. A bit of a lump was in his throat and his eyes were watery with the threat of tears.

If Karen had been suspicious enough to hire a private investigator to tail him or tail Madoka, as well as check the school's attendance records for Madoka's name, then it was quite a bit clearer why Karen was so angry all week. And clearer yet why she had insisted he be the one who kicked Madoka out.

If she had known that he had lied to her about who Madoka was from the start and lied about why she was staying with them, then every day for the last two weeks had been just another nail in the coffin of his marriage as far as Karen was concerned. Every day had been a chance for him to come clean and tell her the truth and let her know what was going on and she waited and watched as every day he chose to keep lying to her.

He'd only meant to help the girl, she'd looked like she was freezing.

"… _not sure what sort of fool you have let yourself become_ _…"_

Well, one small bright spot in all this; the investigator had no idea about 86 Katsuragi and the events of December 19th. God only knew what MBI's response would be if Karen knew the truth about the Sekirei and was threatening to take off for the States. As it was, Karen figured Gregory was the foolish victim of some sort of con job, with Madoka intending to manipulate her way into accessing whatever assets the O'Donnell's might have.

At least Karen was honest about having cleaned out their savings accounts and that she had insured that all of their investments and accounts now required both of their signatures in order to be liquidated or transferred. He had access to the household checking account, where his paycheck was automatically deposited, and that was it.

"… _be damned if some whore is going to get away with my life's savings because you are having a mid-life crisis_ _…"_

Really, it was a completely fair assumption, and Gregory _was_ very upset that his wife of 20 years had left him, to return to the States, leaving him here to… what, carry on as a separated-from-his-wife, middle-aged, Western, ex-patriate?

But that didn't make sense! Gregory frowned, trying very hard to crack this mystery. But no matter how he turned it, it made no sense at all. If Gregory really _were_ separated-but-can't-divorce-because-we're-Catholic and living as an ex-patriate in Asia, he would be having his dick sucked ten times a day by gorgeous Thai girls on the beaches of Phuket, Thailand.

He wouldn't still be in Japan. That's just silly.

"… _will be staying at a rental until my transfer is approved, a few weeks at the most. I will be taking our daughter with me; she does not deserve to be caught up in your stupidity_ _…"_

 _That_ was not going to go well. Mishi loved it here, loved her school, her friends, her boyfriend. He wondered how quickly Karen would begin regretting that decision. He'd already checked the apartment; most of Mishi's clothes were gone and some of her other personal possessions were gone from her room, though much remained, such as her fish tank and her two goldfish. The room showed every sign of having been packed by someone who was very angry. Gregory figured that Karen must have arrived at the apartment from her overnight stay with her co-worker, Miss Hashimoto, right after he left for school that morning. Karen had likely told Mishi to pack and that Mishi had to go with her to whatever temporary rental arrangements Karen had.

Gregory wondered how difficult it had been to convince Mishi to cooperate at all. Gregory would bet money that Karen had not mentioned anything about taking Mishi back to New Hampshire. Otherwise, she would have had to tie the girl up to get her to go along.

He glanced at his cell watch, noticed there were no calls and no texts and no emails. Which meant Karen had probably taken Mishi's phone, wherever they were. Karen did not want Mishi warning him of what was going on, likely, so she had cut off Mishi's communications.

He thought about Mishi's spring semester that was starting next week, how difficult it would be for her to transfer to an American school at this point. How angry she would be with both of her parents for putting her through a relocation, against her wishes. He could not blame Mishi; she had every right to be as angry as she no doubt was.

Tears were now slicking Gregory's cheeks, making it difficult to read the sentence Karen had written where she notified him she was taking his wonderful Mishi-chan back to New Hampshire. Mishi would be very mad at him for allowing this to happen. And that was fair; it _was_ his fault this had happened to her. Gregory had little hope that he would ever be able to convince her to forgive him if she ended up back in New Hampshire because of this.

He tried to wipe the tears out of his eyes but more kept flowing out.

"… _I will be taking our daughter with me; she does not deserve to be caught up in your stupidity_ …"

Gregory had little hope that he would ever be able to convince her to forgive him if she ended up back in New Hampshire because of this. Moreover, thinking about Mishi-chan, Gregory knew he had little hope that he would ever be able to convince her to forgive him if she ended up back in New Hampshire because of this. And, even worse, when it came to the situation with Mishi, Gregory had little hope that he would ever be able to convince her to forgive him if...

A blue tinged zorch of pain shot through the middle of his forehead, through his brain, and then out the back of his head. He would normally be curious as to what might have caused such a singular sensation but he was really too busy. He did try to whimper in recognition of the pain but even that was denied him. There was that thing. You know, the thing with the thing, that was blocking any air or blood or semen from moving around in his body.

But the pain, or the memory of it, forced him to move his head and that seemed to give him a different perspective.

 _Irrevocable_. That was the perfect English word for weather like today. He should make sure to work that into his lessons. It was an _irrevocable_ sort of day. He would never have back the daughter that he'd had _just yesterday_. He would give a lot to overhear, just once, a graduate of the School of Hard Knocking You On Your Ass use "irrevocable" in a pointless mispronounced utterance that had no significant effect on returning Gregory's daughter to him.

The Sekirei Plan had cost him his daughter.

MBI had cost him his daughter.

Hiroto Minaka had just now, this very day, Saturday, December 28th 2019 A.D., cost Gregory Daire O'Donnell the devoted love of Gregory's only daughter, Michelle Lee O'Donnell.

The Sekirei cost him his daughter.

"Hrk…" An alarming, choking, sound penetrated the silence of the apartment.

Hiroto Minaka cost him his daughter.

MBI was responsible for the loss of his daughter.

Gregory believed he might kill everyone who worked for MBI. It would take a long time, it was a large company after all. But if he worked hard and took his vitamins he could probably manage it.

"Hrk…hrk…" Someone nearby was suffering profound respiratory distress. Gregory wished they would kindly shut the fuck up. That wasn't too much to ask, was it?

"Gregory-kun?" His mind didn't register the other, shaky, scared, female, voice coming from behind him.

That all of this had been inevitable, from the moment he'd kissed Madoka and had been pulled into the Sekirei Plan, was no comfort.

Kissing Madoka had cost him his daughter.

He would never have the love of his daughter back, because of Sekirei 01's failure to perform her duty.

"Hrk…"

Perhaps he should kill the person standing nearby who was making that irritating noise. He could squeeze them until they stopped making noises.

He could squeeze Minaka's neck until the man died. That would be for the best. And if he did that, that maddening hrking sound might stop too.

"… _cannot believe you would do this_ _…"_

"… _why would you throw away twenty years_ _…"_

"Hrk…"

A tremulous voice repeating his name came to him from behind him. "Gregory-kun? I am very sorry…"

Gregory vaguely heard someone answer the Sekirei. "Leave me alone, Madoka-san."

"… _I knew you were lying_ _…"_

Gregory recognized that somehow he was now kneeling on the floor, beside the breakfast bar, the letter in his hands. He fell over, catching himself with his hands, remaining there on his hands and knees, mouth open and trying to breathe. Tears were dripping from the tip of his nose and snot was leaking from his nostrils to mix with the spit covering his chin.

"… _gave you every chance_ _…"_

Every handful of seconds Gregory's lungs would try to pull air in through his mouth but his throat was closed and would not let anything through.

"… _lying about her_ _…"_

"Hrk… hrk…"

"… _knew you were lying_ _…"_

There was this huge… _knot_ in his chest, so great and solid that he couldn't breathe around it. As though every muscle in his body was tensed as hard as they could be but all of them were right in the middle of his chest.

A sob tore itself out of that knot of pain and forced its way up and out his mouth, leaving what felt like shredded and bleeding flesh in his throat. He held himself up with one hand on the carpet, his other hand held the letter, crumpled, pressed against the pain in his chest, his eyes screwed shut in a vain effort to shut out reality.

A second sob got through the painful tightness in his throat.

"Gregory-kun? Please…"

"Just leave me the fuck alone, goddamnit! Go away!"

Gregory did not hear the door shut, or Madoka's retreating footsteps, or the rain which still fell from the leaden skies over Shin Tokyo.

He fell over onto his side, still clutching the letter to his chest, as more sobs came, slowly tearing away at the tension and pain in his chest.

o.0.O.0.o

o.0.O.0.o

* * *

From the Notebooks of Gregory O'Donnell

_**Terminology and Conceptual Framework** _

From talking at length to Madoka about the 'research' staff at MBI and what she had spoken with them about, or overhead them saying, over the years she was there, it seems there was no commonly used terminology, no lexicon, not even a conceptual framework for designating the Sekirei more-than-human abilities. Madoka says they just called her ability 'healing'. They described 16 Toyotama's abilities as 'strong'.  
Madoka says the trick to Farsight was a "secret" among the girls in Group 11 that they would share with some of the other Sekirei who were assigned to Group 11 and there was every indication that MBI did not even care about this sort of ability, if they knew about it at all.  
I find it utterly bewildering that any actual scientist would not have, at the very least, defined and categorized these aliens and their abilities. Attempting to discuss these more-than-human traits while calling them "powers" is simply not serious.  
I suspect that early on in the study of the Sekirei, Hiroto Minaka experienced some disaster which drove him mad, and from that point onward his behavior became erratic and irrational, directing the bulk of MBI's resources and efforts away from scientific study and classification and towards conditioning the maturing Sekirei to participate in his "Sekirei Plan".  
As _any_ terminology is better than none, I will use what conceptual framework I can cobble together from various sources: fiction, academic, and speculative, and I will work on producing a lexicon for the terminology we use.  
As we go forward with observation and documentation, any observed facts that do not fit our terminology or framework will require us to adjust the terminology and the framework.

**_We will dedicate extra effort to avoid forcing the observed facts to fit the terminology; instead, we will adapt the terminology to fit the newest observed facts._ **

(Some definitions updated and modified later than the date marked on this entry, as defining and classifying metapsychic abilities correctly is an ongoing project.)

...

 **Term - Metapsychic Abilities:** As these more-than-human abilities need some overall designation other than "powers" I've chosen to refer to them as "metapsychic abilities", "metafunctions", and "metafaculties". Like many of the terms that I have selected these are from the speculative academic papers of Professor Dennis Remillard of Dartmouth, with whom I have corresponded at length since December 19th 2019. Other terms and labels are from fiction that featured such things, notably the science fiction works of Julian May. So far, I have maintained enough distance and vagueness in my discussions with Professor Remillard that MBI should not object, but this cannot likely continue for much longer.

...

**Terms for Degrees of Metapsychic Abilities**

**Operant** – Metapsychic abilities are present and available for conscious, controlled, use.

 **Latent** – Metapsychic ability is present but cannot be used deliberately or consistently. May manifest as exceptional mundane characteristics and skills (i.e., a powerful latent Creator might be a naturally gifted engineer or mechanic).  
We have an early hypothesis that all Earth-born operant and latent metapsychics are descended, to some degree, from early Sekirei insertions into Earth societies.

 **Inoperant** – Without any metapsychic abilities or the potential for them.

...

**Terms for Category of Metapsychic Abilities**

**Psychokinesis** – The ability to move mass by metapsychic effort rather than physical effort.

 **Creation** – Ability to manipulate energy and/or matter. This may take the form of seeming control over fire or electricity, the ability to create illusions. It may also be, in a subconscious form, the power that makes the Sekirei physical form more durable and resistant to damage than human bodies. Madoka reports the Sekirei are no more resistant to injury while sleeping or unconscious than a human and that a Sekirei can have hypodermic needles penetrate their skin with no more difficulty than a human's skin if the Sekirei is cooperative, implying there is a certain conscious metapsychic ability behind those who are resistant to combat damage.

 **Farsense** – The ability to sense at ranges and in conditions beyond normal human limits, both micro and macro. The ability to speak at a distance, or 'telepathy' would fall under this category as well. Farspeak, Farsight, Farsense. The ability to shield their minds from accidentally broadcasting emotions and thoughts is also a characteristic of the Farsense metafunction. From limited observation, it seems all operant metapsychics have some operant Farsense capability, enough to use 'mindspeech' at least, _if they are aware of the metafunction_. The range varies by the strength of the Farsensor.  
Mindspeech from undisciplined and/or untrained operants can be difficult to understand and seems disagreeable to more experienced, disciplined, and trained operants, much like listening to 'baby talk' would be to an adult.  
In addition, whether an operant has their 'shields' up or not appears obvious to any operant that 'looks'. Most latents are known to have shields as well, some at very strong levels. This is common enough that simply checking for any degree of mental shielding has been a mostly reliable method of determining if a subject has latent metapsychic abilities or is inoperant.  
Note: Not all operant metapsychics appear aware they can use Farspeech with other operants.

 **Coercion** (Note - multiple updates to the definitions of this metafunction have been made since the initial entry on 12/26/19) – The ability to mentally command another to perform actions. This may take the form of convincing the target they wish to perform the action or literally force them against their will to act. This ability is included due to the great number of Sekirei who would appear to have some form of it at a latent level, manifesting itself as charisma and sex appeal, allowing the Sekirei to have far higher success rates in manipulating the people around them, consciously or not.  
If there are any Sekirei who have manifested the operant form of this ability they need to be identified as soon as possible as they would be a profound danger to everyone else if they did not have a great deal of ethical education and moral strength.

 **Redaction** (Note - multiple updates to the definitions of this metafunction have been made since the initial entry on 12/26/19) – The ability to heal, which seems to include the ability to heal damage and trauma of the mind as well as the body. While Farsense allows an operant metapsychic to communicate with other operant metapsychics with 'mindspeech', Redactors have the ability to delve into the minds of operant, latent, and inoperant persons. They can read the memories and thoughts if they can delve deeply enough, and they may be able to modify what they find, as well, in order to heal (or cause) mental and emotional trauma. It would seem this ability has a very limited range (requiring touch in most cases) and is slow to engage, making it less than useful in a combat situation.  
This ability seems as rare as Coercion, thankfully.  
Madoka confirms that an Operant's mental shields, which are a function of the Farsense metafaculty, and which can be enhanced if the target has Redact or even Coercion, will block a Redactor's efforts to access their mind. But the Redaction metafunction seems particularly powerful in assaulting or evading shielding, compared to Farsense or even Coercion. We can only speculate at this stage, but we assume this is so the Redactor Healer who needs to access a damaged or disturbed Operant mind will have the tools to get past their mental shielding. Otherwise little healing could truly be done.  
We were also able to confirm, through Madoka's encounter with another Sekirei on 25 Jan 2020, that the "healing" metafunction is what is used to modify or affect the thoughts and memories of a target. One assumes the original purpose of this ability was to heal injuries of the mind and emotional trauma, which is why the "healer" metapsychic has this ability.

 **Sekirei Exceptional Physical Feats** – The ability to lift great weights, leap extreme distances, move at great speeds, these may be a category of metapsychic ability as well. I _suspect_ that these feats have little or nothing to do with the actual muscles and nerves of the Sekirei and are in fact a manifestation of a zero-range/internal only form of PK (psychokinesis), but without additional Sekirei to evaluate it is impossible to do more than speculate.

...

**Terms for Metapsychic Strength Ratings**

At some point detailed and specific tests and evaluations will no doubt be established for rating the "strength" of each metapsychic's operant metafaculties. That there are ranges of capability and potential seems unquestionable, though more observation needs to be done on this subject. Tentatively we are utilizing the following rankings:

**Novice**

**Adept**

**Master**

**Grand Master**

**Paramount Grand Master**

What qualifies an operant to which rankings in the metafaculties they can manifest is extremely subjective at this early stage of study. One expects practitioners of the various metafunctions will, some day, establish benchmarks for defining when someone is worthy of a particular ranking.

In discussions with 37 Madoka, who seems to have a higher than typical ability with the Farsense metafunction and is an operant Redactor, she claims to be able to evaluate the strength of any Sekirei she observes, if given even a few seconds to concentrate on the subject. I've directed her to begin keeping notes on every Sekirei and Ashikabi we encounter as far as their metapsychic strength levels are concerned and any other information she can perceive about them.

...

o.0.O.0.o

o.0.O.0.o

* * *

Started Oct 9 2014  
Finished Oct 13 2014  
Final Edits May 12 2015  
Posted May 16 2015


	3. NGFOM 2.3 – Adjusting

**No Game For Old Men**

Book 2.3 – Adjusting

* * *

 

Saturday, December 28th, 2019

Gregory O'Donnell was lying on the floor of his living room, staring at nothing, thinking of nothing. This blank respite had finally come after some unknown time had passed where all he could think about were memories of him and his wife, Karen. The two of them with their newborn son Mark, with their daughter, Mishi. When they bought their first house, when Karen got her first executive position at the Red Cross, when the two of them graduated college in spite of having a two-year-old son to care for. Their first dog they owned together, cute adorable little Benji, who had died of cancer and had devastated Karen so badly, fifteen years ago now.

Now he was tired of thinking. Now he felt empty. And it was good. An empty that is a relief by comparison to being full of pain. Other thoughts than pain were finally being allowed some time in his mind, thoughts like how thirsty he was. Thoughts like _"Where is Madoka?"_

He then remembered yelling at the girl, telling her to leave him alone, to go away. Empty and emotionally drained or not, he felt shame for having done that, yelling at the young Sekirei girl, who had probably never been yelled at by someone she depended on, someone she trusted. He tried to remember what he had said.

" _Just leave me the fuck alone, goddamnit! Go away!"_

Gregory sighed, but still did not move from where he lay, on his side, on the floor. Getting up in order to get a drink to soothe his sore throat would mean facing the world. Facing the world meant facing his fuckups and having to try to fix them.

He could ignore being thirsty.

And… now he had to pee.

Gregory sighed again. _"Well, damn."_

As Gregory washed his face in the sink, he tried to kick-start his brain into working but it wasn't happening. After a drink of water, and relieving the hydrostatic pressure in his bladder, he was starting to feel a bit more human.

He saw the photos on the breakfast bar countertop, from Karen's private investigator. He stacked them all and tossed them into a desk drawer, with the printed note from Karen. He could not do anything about that right now so there was no point in dwelling on it. He had to get ahold of himself, stop dwelling on what he couldn't do anything about, and look at what he might be able to fix, now.

What he needed to do first was find out where Madoka had gone after he had shouted at her. Might she excuse him if he pointed out that he had been in the middle of a breakdown and shouldn't be held accountable?

At least his mind felt clear now. It had gotten pretty bad there for a bit.

Gregory hoped the last few hours represented a unique experience. As opposed to one that might be repeated in any aspect at all.

The rain was still steadily pouring down, giving every hint that it would continue doing so through the rest of the day and on through the night. It was cold, too, though not freezing, thankfully. Gregory was starting to really worry about where Madoka might have gone. She was, no doubt, upset when she left, thanks to him. Well, probably more "madder than hell" than just "upset", but still, it was his fault.

Checking the map app on his phone for where Madoka's phone was, he hoped she'd had it in her pocket when she had left. Gregory noticed that it had been just over two hours since he and Madoka had arrived at the apartment from his Saturday class.

When her phone showed up on the map as being at the apartment, he started worrying a bit more. If she had left her phone with her purse and if she had run off without either of them…

Gregory grabbed the keys to the Jeep, pulled an umbrella from the hall closet, and then headed out to see if he could find his Sekirei.

As soon as he opened the front door he saw the rain-soaked and shivering girl, sitting against the outside wall of the O'Donnell's apartment, a couple of meters from the front door. She looked up as soon as Gregory opened the door, tears streaming down her face, complete misery written in her expression. He did not know how long she'd been there, but she had certainly been weeping for some time, judging by her puffy eyes and red nose.

In a choked and strained voice, she immediately beseeched, "Ashikabi-sama, please do not make me leave. Please! I am so sorry, please forgive me!"

"Say again?"

To Gregory's shock and distress, Madoka turned towards him and knelt dogeza, prostrating herself with her forehead on the wet concrete of the walkway. Her shoulders were shaking from crying and likely from being soaking wet in the cold rain. He tossed the umbrella back into the apartment and hurried over to Madoka, taking her arm with one hand, the other going around her waist as he pulled her to her feet as gently as he could.

"Oh my God… Mado-chan, please, come inside. Come on, inside, I'm not mad at you, you do not need forgiveness for anything. Come on, let's get you out of the cold wind and get you a towel." Gregory practically carried the girl into the apartment; her legs were too shaky to hold her up. He did not want to think how long she had been kneeling next to the wall, but it was at least long enough for her wet jeans to cut off the circulation to her lower legs.

"I am so sorry Ashikabi-sama, I am so sorry, please do not make me leave, please, I will do anything, please do not make me leave, I will be anyone you want me to be, I promise, I swear it, please just do not make me leave…" Madoka kept crying, her normally soft voice was raspy from tears and the cold. Her face was turned up to look at him as he mostly carried her into the apartment; her anguish was so intense and obvious that it broke his heart. Yeah, there was something profoundly evil that had been done to these girls. And if it took the rest of his life, Gregory would find some way to cure them of it.

Gregory shut the apartment door behind him with a foot, and then led Madoka to take a seat on one of the dining table chairs. His heart sunk even lower, tears gathering in his own eyes, self-recrimination managing to find more fuel to burn even after he thought he could not possibly feel any worse.

He wrapped a clean, dry, towel around Madoka's shoulders and handed her another one to dry her face. Dropping to one knee next to the chair, he said, in Japanese in spite of being in the apartment, "I'm going to start a pot of tea, Mado-chan. I'll be right here. It's okay, no one is making you leave, I promise."

When she just started crying harder, Gregory squeezed her shoulder and waited to see if she would say anything. She buried her face in the towel he had handed her, shoulders shaking from sobs.

Gregory could only say, "I'm just going to make some hot tea for you, Mado-chan. Try to dry your hair, okay?"

Gregory stood and went to the kitchen, pouring water into the teapot, looking for the tea strainer. His shoulders were slumped and his head bowed; he felt as though there was a thousand pounds of weight on his back. He had to fix this; it was his fault his Sekirei was crying her heart out at his dining room table.

He was not exactly sure _why_ she was so distraught, but he fully acknowledged it was his fault. She was not in the same condition she was in two weeks ago when he found her. Now she had her ID and MBI card, plus several million yen in cash and a good phone that she knew how to use. And two weeks of education on living in the world of 21st century Japan. But she hadn't grabbed her purse and cash stash and left when he had yelled at her; instead she had huddled outside in the cold, becoming convinced what had happened was _her_ fault.

He knew her situation was his fault. Just as it was his fault that Karen and Mishi were living in a short-term rental apartment across the city until they could return to New Hampshire. It was his fault Mishi was likely cursing his name for being the reason she was going to have to move to the States and transfer to a school she had no friends at, the reason she would have to leave her friends and her boyfriend.

Well, it was MBI's, Hiroto Minaka's, possibly Sekrei 01's, and possibly other agents of MBI's fault _first_. Then the remaining fault fell to him before any of it touched his Sekirei or his daughter.

Both hands on the stove to hold himself up against the weight he felt pressing him down, Gregory watched the teapot slowly heat up with only the sound of Madoka's crying filling the room. "Mado-chan, you don't have to leave, I promise," Gregory said again, still leaning on the stove and staring at the teapot.

He turned his head to look at the blonde girl, who was still crying her heart out. The sight of her sitting there with her face in her hands, bent over almost in half, the towel he had placed over her shoulders having slid half off onto the floor, tore at him. He did not think he had ever seen anyone so despondent about anything in his whole life.

Straightening his shoulders and shaking off the weariness that was pressing down on him, Gregory closed the couple of meters between the stove and her chair, took a knee in front of her, wrapped her up in his arms, and then hugged the little blonde Sekirei to his chest, murmuring what he hoped were reassuring words. "I'm so sorry Mado-chan. I should not have yelled at you. It was not your fault, I promise. It was my fault, not yours, don't feel like it was your fault, it was mine, I promise. I'm very sorry for yelling at you, and I don't want you to leave."

She clutched at him, her hands gripping his shirt tightly, pressing her face against his chest, as she cried.

"I'll never want you to leave, Mado-chan."

She hiccoughed then asked, through her tears, "Do, do, you promise, Greg…or…ry-kun? You will never want me to leave?"

Gregory kept rubbing circles on her shoulder with the palm of his hands, holding the distraught Sekirei close. He understood now that he had not really appreciated how attached a Sekirei was to their Ashikabi, in spite of Madoka's descriptions of the bond as "lifetime" and "forever". She was easily as distraught, even more so, than he had been when he had realized his wife had left.

It was just _starting_ to dawn on him just exactly how large a bomb had gone off in the middle of his nice, safe, comfortable life, when he had offered a warm donut to a cold, shivering, girl two weeks ago.

Gregory squeezed her against his chest and, in spite of all sanity, replied, "I promise. Forever and ever, Mado-chan."

She started bawling at that, but Gregory suspected these were more tears of relief, even happiness.

He went to fetch tea for both of them, seeing as both were emotionally exhausted now.

o.0.O.0.o

o.0.O.0.o

That evening, Gregory sat on the couch, writing in the Notebook. Madoka was lying on the couch, still asleep, under a blanket, as she had been for the last few hours. She was exhausted from the emotional and, Gregory was shocked to found out, physical trauma of the day.

He wrote, " _…reported that not only did she suffer from sharing her Ashikabi's emotional reaction through the bond but when she thought she had been ordered away from her Ashikabi, a physical reaction occurred on top of the already significant emotional one._  
_We are tentatively naming this phenomenon Crest Rejection Shock. Madoka had actually heard of something vague when she was a child, something about the price a Sekirei pays if their Ashikabi rejects them. And this certainly seems to fit the symptoms the vague story from her childhood described._  
_She was able to tell me she did not think it was normal for a Sekirei to be hit with Crest Rejection Shock over something like this, so quickly. It should require a far more clear, intentional, unmistakable, rejection of the bonded Sekirei to cause Crest Rejection Shock to start. But, we believe today's situation was aggravated by what she was experiencing through the bond, i.e., her Ashikabi's emotions and feelings of being rejected by his wife._  
_Until we can interview other Sekirei who have experienced Crest Rejection Shock, we will not know, unfortunately._  
_She didn't make it five meters from the apartment before the pain, which started high on her back at her Sekirei Crest and went through the center of her torso, put her on her knees. She then crawled back to lean against the apartment wall. This would seem to suggest that 'forever and ever' is not just a fond wish, for the Sekirei, but is, instead, a physiologically enforced mandate. Is this a remnant of their original species? Something designed for their human bodies by their original species, for this colonization effort? Something done to them by MBI?_  
_I don't have any way to know right now, but finding out is critical. This is nothing less than biological slavery; if there is any way at all to reverse and eradicate the threat of this Crest Rejection Shock simple human decency insists it be found."_

Gregory stopped writing and leaned back, resting his head against the wall behind the couch. The living room was dimly lit, only the lamp next to the couch providing any illumination to the open central area of the apartment. Gregory's eyes lingered on the bottle of scotch he could just see, sitting alongside a few other bottles of liquor on the sideboard in the dining area.

" _No. That's not going to help."_

His gaze dropped from the far side of the dining room to the very near person sharing the couch with him. She was sound asleep, thankfully, and looked comfortable, so he hadn't tried to get her to go on and sleep in Mishi's room.

Gregory's thoughts kept running in circles. He tried to reason with himself, _"What am I going to do? Sure, maybe Karen and Mishi being in the States will make them safer than remaining here. Maybe a little time and space will allow Karen to cool off; maybe we can patch things up later. She didn't mention divorce, I doubt she would ever suggest it. But living separated from now on might as well be the same thing."_

Gregory rubbed his forehead with a hand, trying to work out the tension. _"Still, I can't do anything about that right now. Maybe it's a mixed blessing, Karen going back home. This Sekirei Plan thing is going to get dangerous, I know it. But what about when it's over? What's my 'best case' scenario? How can I ever patch things up with Karen if Madoka is…"_

Gregory grimaced, watching Madoka sleep, unable to figure out any long-term picture that seemed reasonable or likely.

" _Okay, then we put the long term on hold, indefinitely. I cannot waste my time spinning my wheels worrying about what's going to happen a year from now. So, short term plans only, for now."_

Gregory nodded to himself and returned his focus to the Notebook. Fixing the Crest Rejection Shock thing was long term too, he knew, but it was absolutely one of the first things he would have at the top of every to-do list he was a part of from now on.

He also needed to work on cleaning up his growing hypothesis concerning the way the Sekirei might adapt themselves to their Ashikabi. Did the Sekirei just pick the most compatible Ashikabi by good luck or psychic intuition? Or did they pick an Ashikabi and then change over time to suit that Ashikabi's nature? Alternatively, perhaps just as bad, were the Sekirei condemned to a literal, physiologically enforced, slavery to a mate they were incompatible with if they happened to pick badly or if they were forced by circumstance to bond with someone who was less than ideal?

Whatever the case, he needed to find ways to define and test the nature of the bond between the Sekirei and the Ashikabi. How did it affect the Sekirei, how did it affect the Ashikabi, if there was any safe way to sever the bond, a safe way to transfer it, maybe even if there was some way to make sure both the Sekirei and the Ashikabi were equally treated by the bond, if nothing else.

Gregory resumed making notes in the Notebook, grimly ignoring the bottle of scotch.

o.0.O.0.o

o.0.O.0.o

Sunday, December 29th, 2019

By Sunday afternoon the rain had finally relented, leaving the city washed clean, gleaming in the bright winter sunlight and under a brilliant blue sky, a comfortable 50f. Gregory felt the need to get out of the apartment and find a place where the two of them could clear their heads after the drama of the last 24 hours.

"Mado-chan, we've got that MBI card which can be used for damn near anything. I think it's time you saw some of the nicer things that Shin Tokyo has to offer in the way of hotels and dining. Go put on whatever you have that's nice and I'll do the same and we're going to go check into the," Gregory paused and looked at his tablet, "the Four Seasons. Five minutes away from the Imperial Palace, ten minutes from Ginza. We've got two king-size rooms next door to each other reserved for the next two nights."

Gregory knew it was a good idea when he saw Madoka immediately cheer up. She jumped up from the couch and ran off to Mishi's bedroom, "Okay, Gregory-kun!"

o.0.O.0.o

o.0.O.0.o

Gregory and Madoka watched the sun set over Shin Tokyo, the clear sky a startling shade of cobalt blue over their heads, from their vantage on the fifth floor balcony outside Gregory's room. The patio furniture for the "Four Seasons at Marunouchi" rooms was more comfortable than the O'Donnell's dining room furniture, a fact Gregory pointed out to Madoka with some amusement.

Madoka looked out at downtown Shin Tokyo, the lights from the towering skyscrapers unable to compete with the glorious sunset, but she could see that soon the night would be illuminated by the holographics and LED's from nearby Ginza as well as the projections which were so popular among the giant towers of the downtown district. It was an almost breathtaking view, even from only the fifth floor. As the Four Seasons at Marunouchi was what could be called an "intimately sized" 5 star hotel and only occupied the first six floors of the fifty that made up the skyscraper, Madoka felt as though she were among, instead of above, the amazing architecture which made up this border between downtown and the Ginza commercial district.

"Okay, Mado-chan," Gregory's baritone caught her attention back to what they were doing, "the next school semester starts in a week, which means I have to allocate time over the next week to prepare for that. I know my job distracts from our ability to completely commit our attention to MBI and the Sekirei Plan, but outside of just quitting my job with no notice there isn't much I can do about that. So I'm committed to teaching at Tokyo Metro High School through this semester, which concludes on… let's see… Friday, March 27th." Gregory consulted the calendar on his large tablet, and then reached for his bottle of Diet Coke.

"That will occupy a great deal of your time, and be dangerous, right?" Madoka was sitting a quarter around the patio table from Gregory. Her thick blonde hair was pulled up into a high ponytail, a style she had not worn since leaving the MBI Sekirei Labs. From the glances Gregory kept shooting her way, she thought he found it attractive. She was comfortably relaxing in a long wool sweater, which fell to her upper thighs, and blue jeans, and her phone was sitting on the table in front of her in case she needed to make notes or look something up.

Gregory shrugged, "I don't know about dangerous, but it's necessary. I'm not walking away from my teaching position at Tokyo Metro unless I'm given no other options. From our best guesses, it is going to be four months until all of the Sekirei are active and in the city anyway."

Gregory flipped through his notes. "Here, what you said you overheard from MBI's lab techs. The Second Phase of the Sekirei Plan, where MBI is going to, somehow, take control of the entire city and control all traffic in and out, won't start until 90% of the Sekirei are winged. That cannot happen until at least 90% of the Sekirei are released by MBI. If they keep to the schedule of releasing three to five Sekirei a week the earliest we're looking at is April. And by April it will be a new academic year; maybe I can arrange a leave of absence or something, if it's necessary."

Gregory set down his pen and picked up his drink, leaning back in the patio chair, watching her. "I think 'life as usual' can go on through the end of the First Phase, at least."

"Okay, Gregory-san," Madoka agreed, not truly understanding why Gregory would want to risk going back and forth to school every day, but she also didn't want to disagree with him about it.

Gregory gave a small sigh in response. "Mado-chan… you're still feeling bad about yesterday, aren't you."

She could only shrug, then look down and away. She could not help it, even though Gregory said it was his fault, that he was sorry for how he had spoken to her, and that he did not want her to go away, she just could not help but feel like she was standing on a precipice, with just a small breeze needed to push her over. Whatever confidence she had in the relationship between them had been completely shattered yesterday, thanks to the tama pain that had punished her for not doing what her Ashikabi wanted, not being who her Ashikabi needed, not behaving as her Ashikabi expected.

"I guess," Gregory mused out loud, "that I could tell you again that it truly was not your fault and that I am profoundly sorry for my behavior, and that wouldn't do any more good today than it did yesterday."

" _Oh no, he thinks I just do not believe him! I am making it worse!"_

Madoka looked up at Gregory, her eyes wide, protesting, "No, no, Gregory-kun! I believe you, I am sorry if I made you think I did not believe you!"

He smiled ruefully back at her, reaching out to take one of her hands in his. "It's okay, Mado-chan, it's okay." Gregory looked around the patio, then away from the balcony towards the other tall buildings nearby. He said, "Let's go inside for a minute, I've got an idea that might help." Gregory released her hand and stood from the patio table, gesturing for her to precede him through the door.

Once inside Gregory pulled the glass door shut, the evening twilight combined with the few lights in the luxurious room made the area dim. Madoka could only just make out Gregory's slender, tall, figure in silhouette as he turned back from the glass door to face her.

"Mado-chan," he began, his deep voice sounding uncharacteristically nervous, "I think yesterday, with the way your, ah, tama core, was causing pain when you thought your Ashikabi was rejecting you, I suspect that even after I explained that I didn't really want you to go away that the damage was already done, so to say. The damage to our bond, our connection."

Madoka's eyes widened, "What do you mean? I can still feel it; it is still there, our bond! It is not damaged, Gregory-kun!"

Gregory took both her hands and met her eyes, "Calm, calm, Mado-chan. Of course it is still there, nothing can ever break it, right? What I mean is that the bond… it felt threatened, so now you probably feel like if you do even one wrong thing you'll fall off a cliff or something. Am I right?"

Madoka just stared up at Gregory then nodded. "That is… that is exactly right. How did you know?"

She could just make out his crooked smile in the twilight. He answered, "Eh, I've got some experience with being insecure about things, so it wasn't hard to guess at how you were feeling. So, the problem right now is that our bond is insecure. I've got an idea that might help it a little. Or maybe a lot."

"What is it? I want to go back to the way things were before… yesterday." Madoka squeezed both of Gregory's hands, hard. If there was any way to just make the last 24 hours not have happened she would take it!

"Well, eh," Gregory took a deep breath then continued, "I suspect that if we, eh, kiss, it will reinforce the bond. The bond has only had the one time, two weeks ago, and from what you told me about Sekirei and their larger abilities, what was it called…"

"Norito."

"Yes, Norito, then kissing after the initial winging has a measurable effect on the state of the Sekirei and on their abilities. So, it's highly likely a kiss establishes a metapsychic connection between the Ashikabi and the Sekirei, each time. And, well, if we establish that connection again, that might help with getting past what happened, yesterday."

Madoka felt her cheeks reddening in spite of herself. It was one thing to kiss Gregory when she was about to be captured by Higa's agents, but it was something else to just do it here in a hotel room. She also thought about the experience she'd had through the bond the other night, when Gregory was in the shower and again in the grocery store.

If their bond wasn't secure and strong "that" might not happen again. And she had decided she really wanted that to happen again, scary or not.

Gregory was waiting for her answer. What she could see of his expression in the dim light indicated he was starting to lose his nerve, which, oddly enough, reassured her.

"Yes, Gregory-kun. I think that is a good idea." Madoka nodded her head once, decisively, and kept her voice light. "So, how do we do this?"

She could make out the relief in Gregory's posture; he really had been nervous about suggesting this. Considering the fact that she would probably have done anything he ordered her to do, because of how insecure she felt in their bond right now, she was comforted that he was making such an effort to ask her opinion and get her permission before even kissing her.

" _He really is a good guy,"_ Madoka thought to herself.

Standing near each other, the difference in their heights was extremely obvious, even humorous. Gregory was about 1.9 meters tall and she was barely 1.5 meters tall. Which meant the top of her head barely reached Gregory's shoulders if they were standing next to each other. It was almost beyond humorous and into the realm of ridiculous actually.

"Hmmm. I assume you mean the mechanics of dealing with our differing heights. Good question, Mado-chan. It really is probably a good thing we're thinking about this now instead of in the middle of an emergency when you might need your Norito, right?" Gregory's chuckle sounded a bit forced, but he was right. It sure would be a silly way to be terminated, unable to get her Norito from her Ashikabi because the two of them did not know how to kiss.

"I could stand on a chair," Madoka suggested, optimistically. No, kissing someone while standing on a chair would not be awkward at all!

"If you were standing on a chair, I'm afraid you'd be taller than me. Enough taller than me that it would be… incredibly distracting." Gregory gestured vaguely at Madoka's chest while trying not to look at her chest.

It took her a moment, trying to figure out what the problem was and what her chest would have to do with… oh. Yes. Well, yes, if she were standing on a chair her breasts would be right in Gregory's face. Yes, he might find that distracting.

She laughed, once she realized what he was hinting at. "This is silly, Gregory-kun. I do not think it is supposed to be so difficult, just kissing someone!"

Gregory joined in the laughter, and then said, "You're right, you're right. Normally if I was intending to kiss a woman I'd just, well, just kiss her, but… I admit I'm a bit nervous." His thoughts wandered around the subject, _"Karen is not as short so it wasn't as awkward… damnit Greg, focus, man, focus."_

"It is okay, Gregory-kun. You have done more kissing in your life than I have, so you lead and I will follow and do not worry about, you know, stuff. It is okay, it really is." Madoka looked up at her Ashikabi, giving him _10,000 Watts of Resistance Is Futile_ ® smile.

That seemed to convince him. It always did.

Gregory nodded, took a breath, then stepped close and cupped her face in his right hand, gently stroking the side of his thumb along her cheek. Then he leaned down and kissed her.

She had expected a chaste kiss, maybe at most something sweet and lingering. And, to Gregory's credit, it _did_ start out that way. But after just a moment her lips parted of their own volition, and a small moan escaped her throat. She really had not meant for either to happen, but the way he looked at her before closing the distance between their lips…

She knew that look; she knew what _that girl_ looked like through adoring eyes. She could not _help_ but part her lips, could not _help_ but moan in response.

Her Ashikabi acted as though those two small things flipped some sort of switch in him, washing away whatever reluctance remained.

The hand on her cheek moved to the back of her neck, cradling her head, as Gregory's lips pressed more firmly against hers, their mouths open and his tongue exploring her lips and the tip of her own tongue. He was not suffocating her, but with the way his other arm wrapped around her body and pulled her up against his chest and how he held the back of her head so firmly, she suddenly found herself short of breath. Her heart was hammering and there was a roaring sound in her ears while the rest of her body just _melted_ against Gregory's tall frame. This did not seem awkward or difficult at all! Her eyes, which had closed as soon as their lips touched, opened wide as sunshine-yellow light filled the living room and a jolt of electricity went through her body.

"Ahh!" A gasp that Madoka could not help broke their kiss, as the bright, billowing, wings erupted from high on her back. The light reflected back at her through Gregory's intense green stare, the two of them just looking at each other in silence for a moment. His arms holding her tightly to him and, without her even realizing she'd done it her own hands had locked together behind Gregory's neck to pull him deeper into the kiss.

Madoka wished she could see what Gregory's eyes were seeing at that moment. Looking into the face of _that girl_ , with the ephemeral light of her wings just now slowly fading, the two of them having just broken a surprisingly passionate kiss. She realized how vain that might seem, but the way Gregory saw her was… difficult to resist.

There was nothing in the world that was as beautiful as what she looked like through Gregory O'Donnell's eyes.

"Well," Gregory began, then looked away and cleared his throat. She thought he might actually be blushing! She could also clearly feel his arousal, hard and pressing against her belly through their clothes. Just from kissing her?

Gregory relaxed the hold he had on her, making sure she was steady on her feet before stepping back. "Well, um. That was… very nice. Thank you, Mado-chan."

Madoka had one hand pressed against her chest where her heart was still thumping hard, and reached out with the other to take Gregory's hand. She smiled up at him, "Thank you, Gregory-kun." She paused a moment and thought about how she felt, and then said, "You were right. I do feel much better now. Thank you!"

o.0.O.0.o

o.0.O.0.o

Gregory returned to the room's patio with another Diet Coke for himself and one for Madoka. He set hers on the table in front of her and walked on around to his own chair, settling himself and reaching for his cigarettes. After lighting one, he glanced up at Madoka, who was tapping out notes on her phone, and said, "Sorry, they didn't have any Pokka tea in the bar. So, your Norito. When a Sekirei kisses their Ashikabi, they get the wing manifestation again just like their initial winging, and their abilities get a short term across the board boost, plus there is supposed to be a, like, chant or prayer or such which fires off a high powered special attack?"

Madoka nodded, a bit morosely, and answered, "Yes, that is what is _supposed_ to happen."

"And you felt like you have more power now but you don't know what the chant part of your Norito is so you can't use it?" Gregory asked while making more notes in the Notebook. "No one told you what your Norito was, so how do any of you know what to say, how to trigger it?"

With a grimace and a shrug, Madoka set down her phone and looked out at the city from the patio. She said, "I do not know, and it is funny now that we are talking about it, that it never came up in the Labs. No one ever talked about how they would learn what their Norito was. Of course, none of them had the ability to use a Norito in the labs because none of us had Ashikabi yet. And that leads me to another question. I do not even know why MBI or any of us Sekirei know about the Norito. How did MBI even find out to tell us what little they did tell us? Since not one of the Sekirei that I ever heard of had an Ashikabi before they started releasing us at the first of December, at the start of Phase 1, how would any Sekirei or MBI know about things that only happen once a Sekirei has an Ashikabi, like the Norito?"

Gregory answered, "I'd bet a month's salary, at any odds you care to name, that at least one Sekirei was bound to an Ashikabi well before the First Phase began. With MBI's people recording every part of it and studying every effect afterwards." He ignored the shocked look on Madoka's face at the suggestion, and continued, "As far as where they'd get the information? From the records on the ship. Or from 01. But unless there was a record somewhere of what every Sekirei's Norito was going to be, some day in the future, they wouldn't know that specific information. Maybe it just comes to you when you're ready to use it? Inspiration of the moment?"

"Maybe. Still, Gregory-kun, it bothers me that even after we kissed and my wings flared and I can feel the effects of the Norito boost, that I have no idea what my chant is. What if I do not know what it is when I need it?"

"Well, we'll have to see if there are ways we can figure it out. Since your metafaculties are all healing oriented maybe you need a target to heal with your Norito. I tell you what, Mado-chan, I'll think about it and see if we can come up with some way to figure it out, okay? Oh, and we _still_ need to put aside time to test your Farsense metafaculty. How far it works, what it works on, how error free it is, can you evaluate other Sekirei and Ashikabi, how far can you sense them, all that sort of detail."

"Okay, Gregory-kun. Thank you." She smiled across the table at him while she reached for her own drink.

Gregory flipped to another page in the Notebook. "So, let's look at possible strategies, Mado-chan."

His blonde Sekirei, now noticeably more chipper than she had been before the kiss, nodded and set her drink down. She replied, "Okay, Gregory-kun. What is strategy, exactly? It's like a plan, right?"

Gregory shook his head, "Kind of. Strategy is a high-level plan to achieve your goals. It's the big picture, the grand scheme. Many use the word 'tactics' in the same way they use 'strategy' but that is not correct. Tactics are the way you achieve a specific task. Strategy is the entire plan which defines your goals and the broad picture of how you will accomplish them."

He could not tell if she got it or not, so Gregory continued, "Let's see if I can give an example that makes it clear. We are committed to participate in the Sekirei Plan in some way, simply because you are a Sekirei, I am your Ashikabi, and MBI is forcing us to be involved in the Sekirei Plan. Now, our goal might be something like 'survive the Sekirei Plan so we can live our lives afterwards in peace' or it might be 'win the Sekirei Plan and take the reward for ourselves'. If we decided our goal was to win the contest, then we would need to come up with a strategy to deal with the other Sekirei and Ashikabi. That strategy might be to defeat them all in combat one on one," Gregory held up his hand to forestall her protests, "I know that's not likely, I'm just using it as an example. Perhaps our strategy would be to get others to ally themselves with us long enough to defeat all the others. Whatever our overall idea was to 'win the Sekirei Plan' that would be our strategy. I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that Higa's strategy is to capture and force wing as many Sekirei to him as he can, building up an irresistible force, and either win the Plan per MBI's rules or bypass them entirely and go after MBI directly. Just as an example of what 'strategy' might be in one specific case, okay?"

Gregory took a drag on his cigarette and blew out the smoke in a long sigh. He continued, "If we encountered a specific challenge, like, say, running into 86 Katsuragi out in the city, we would want to have prepared tactics for how to deal with that challenge. If we had good tactics, a good plan for that specific challenge, then we might do better in that situation than if we were just making up our plan of action as we went along."

"Does that make sense?" He reached for his drink and picked it up.

Madoka nodded, "I think I understand, yes. If our goal was to just survive, our strategy for that might be to escape the city and be far away until the Sekirei Plan was done with. We would need to come up with tactics for overcoming the obstacles that would try to interfere with our strategy, like MBI's security forces and the difficulty of traveling overseas with me not having a visa."

"Right! Just so, Mado-chan." Gregory took a drink and then set the bottle down, picked up his pen, and started making notes in the Notebook. "So, the first thing we need to do is figure out our goal. Then come up with some strategies that will accomplish that goal."

"I do not think there is any way we can win the prize, Gregory-kun." Madoka looked down at her hands in her lap, and then continued, "I am likely the weakest of all the Sekirei. I truly cannot defeat any of the others in combat, especially with the way we are supposed to fight. The rules say we are to fight one on one, we each declare our name and number to our opponent, and then we can fight. The fight continues until one or the other is terminated, by being physically injured so badly she cannot go on, or if one combatant gets such an upper hand that she can place her finger on her opponent's Sekirei Crest and recite her Norito. In either case, the Sekirei is defeated and her Crest disappears. The victor is supposed to stand guard over the fallen until MBI shows up to recover the terminated Sekirei."

Gregory was taking notes, then after a moment remarked, "That sounds like something someone who watched too many cartoons would come up with. Someone who read too much manga. Such ritualized, formal, combat is almost unheard of in the real world. Even the stories of samurai encountering each other on the road and dueling over using a bridge, or European knights in metal armor jousting against each other for the favor of some maiden, these things are the invention of storytellers. Made up stories that were told by professional entertainers to the wealthy, and, usually, the audience they made up the stories for was the wives and other female kin of wealthy and powerful men. So the stories were made up by men who never fought in battles and were tailored to appeal to romantic and naïve views of combat and war held by the women of their patrons, who also never fought or witnessed battle. Which is why so many of the old stories focus on one brave man, the chosen of the gods or blessed by fate, struggling against evil wicked men who do things like kidnap beautiful young maidens and whatnot."

Gregory paused in his note taking and looked up at Madoka, grimacing, "Whoever came up with this Sekirei Plan is an idiot. Someone who wants to see 'battles' but has no actual experience with what battle is. They want to have this controlled little war in the city, with a bunch of rules to make it entertaining for them, and they have nothing but a romantic and naïve view of what war is. I'm only a schoolteacher, but I've at least bothered to educate myself about the uglier, difficult things in this life. Hiroto Minaka seems to be a complete lunatic _and_ a moron."

Madoka frowned and said, "But it is MBI who is doing all of this, so that we Sekirei can ultimately find our Ashikabi and ascend!"

Gregory smiled and shook his head. Maybe it was time to at least _start_ working on tearing down this part of Madoka's conditioning. "Mado, you said yourself you don't know what 'ascend' means, and MBI has never told you. You don't need the Sekirei Plan in order to find your Ashikabi. If MBI had released you all from the imprisonment they kept you in your whole life, you'd have the chance then to explore the city and meet your Ashikabi. Without having Katsuragi chasing you down to take you back to Higa, I'd like to point out."

He paused a moment, tapping his pen on the Notebook. Then he continued, "MBI has set up this dangerous and destructive 'game' for their own reasons, Mado. Likely those reasons are, at least in part, the entertainment of a madman, Hiroto Minaka. Whatever other reasons there are we can't know, but I can guarantee one thing, Mado-chan."

"What is that, Gregory-kun?"

He looked at his pretty Sekirei and answered in as serious a tone as he could, "The one thing we _can_ be sure of is that the Sekirei Plan is not for the benefit of the Sekirei. Whatever MBI claims about the Sekirei Plan is irrelevant; the truth is this whole 'game' is a disaster for the Sekirei. The goal is to kill every other Sekirei that is alive on this world until there is only one left. Think about that for a minute, Mado-chan. Really stop and think about that and ask yourself how that can help the Sekirei? How can genocide help the victims of the genocide?"

"Well, maybe it will not help all the Sekirei but the one who wins will have won and will be safe from any other Sekirei ever trying to kill them, because they would be the only one left." Madoka looked almost angry about the idea that the Sekirei Plan was not good, just, and necessary, Gregory noticed.

"That's true, I suppose. But if there was no Sekirei Plan, why would another Sekirei be trying to kill you?" Gregory waited while Madoka turned that over in her head.

After a moment she answered, "Maybe because they wanted what I had or they just did not like me. Does there have to be a reason? If there is only me and one other Sekirei then one of us would fight the other so they would be safe from the other."

Gregory took another sip of his drink, thinking. _"Either the Sekirei are naturally prone to considering each other enemies or MBI has done a very good job with its conditioning program."_

Gregory set his drink down and carefully considered his words. "Mado-chan, I've got a hypothetical situation for you. Give me your best answer, it's not right or wrong, just whatever your best answer is for it, okay? So, if there was just you and one other Sekirei on an island and the other Sekirei didn't know you were there, they were asleep, and you were right next to them with, say, a knife in your hand. And they were sound asleep, completely unable to defend themselves. Would you stab them?"

Gregory watched Madoka's expression carefully as she thought about the question. After a moment he realized she was likely trying to come up with an answer he would like instead of answering from her heart. This was, he supposed, its own sort of answer. It sure did seem that either the Sekirei were, by nature, extremely aggressive and territorial or MBI had damaged them profoundly, because the answer to that question would be simple and easy for almost any human. Absent any reason, and it would need to be a _good_ reason with good proof, to think the other person was hostile, most people would not even think about stabbing them in their sleep.

That the moral and ethical answer was not so immediately obvious to Madoka was extremely disturbing.

Gregory was now _much_ happier about the fact that Karen was going to be an ocean and a continent away from Shin Tokyo soon.

Gregory continued writing in his Notebook, until Madoka spoke up.

"I do not know. It would depend on who they were, Gregory-kun. If it was my friend Yosuga, of course I would not. But if it was someone like Katsuragi I would."

Gregory nodded, as though he was agreeing. He did not bother pointing out that in the hypothetical situation he'd set up she was, deliberately, without information about who this other Sekirei was and without information about what their motives or behavior might be. What was important was that her answer was an effort to answer with something she felt Gregory would approve of.

"You've mentioned your friend, Yosuga, before. And others in the MBI Sekirei Labs you grew up with who you were close to, such as 16 Toyotama. Could you and Yosuga get along and cooperate if you had been released at the same time and in the same place?"

Madoka nodded her head, "Yes, of course. It is what we planned on, why I want to find some way to get my phone number or your phone number to her so she can reach us as soon as she is released. When we were younger we agreed that we would help each other, even share the same Ashikabi if we could."

Gregory frowned at that. "I thought you said an Ashikabi having more than one Sekirei was wrong, when you were telling me about what happened with Katsuragi."

"No, Gregory-kun," Madoka corrected, "it was Higa's forcing Katsuragi which was so wrong! If she and Toyotama-onee-sama wished to share their Ashikabi and he wanted it too there would not be anything wrong with that."

Gregory made a few notes and decided to set that subject aside for a bit. "Back to the situation on the island, with no one else around and you had a knife. What if the person asleep in front of you were not a Sekirei, but instead was just a human? No one you know, just some random person?"

This time her answer was immediate. "I would not stab them. There would be no reason to stab a human who was just sleeping."

Gregory continued writing as he nodded to Madoka. She was conditioned to see all other Sekirei as enemies, with only a few exceptions, and those were the result of exposure during the time she was growing up. Humans did not register as automatic enemies, as automatic threats, like Sekirei did. Were the Sekirei so competitive against each other that they couldn't cooperate? No, that couldn't be right, Madoka got along with other girls growing up and even said she could imagine sharing an Ashikabi with another Sekirei.

Gregory wondered what sort of world the Sekirei homeworld was, wondered if the behavior Madoka was demonstrating was native to them instead of a result of MBI's machinations of the Sekirei. It would be a miracle that they had been able to establish any sort of civilization, much less advance to starship interstellar exploration if they were as aggressive, territorial, and suspicious of each other as the Sekirei seemed to be. He made a note on his "Long Term" page about that subject then turned his attention back to Madoka.

"Either way, for now it isn't terribly important. So, the Sekirei Plan and our strategy. We could try to escape the city and MBI's Sekirei Plan, but that is likely impossible. They already know who we are, where we are, what our resources are, and by now they have a list of everyone I have ever met. Running and hiding is almost completely out of the question, so staying and surviving is likely our only real hope for getting through this."

Madoka slumped, discouraged. "You really do not think there is any chance at all we could get away? I had thought that maybe since you know so much about how the world works you might be able to come up with some kind of plan."

"No, I'm afraid not, Mado-chan. And while I appreciate your faith in my experience with the world I'm not really super-secret-agent man, who can elude the security apparatus of a trillion yen multinational corporation like MBI. And who knows what sort of legal and illegal resources they have dedicated specifically to keeping their Sekirei and Ashikabi in Shin Tokyo and participating in the Sekirei Plan." Gregory smiled and tapped her foot with his own. "Hey, it's not that bad. We'll figure out something. It's just that escaping to South America and hiding out in the Amazon isn't going to be the plan."

"Then what can we do, Gregory-kun?"

"Let's keep our heads down, avoid conflicts with other Sekirei and Ashikabi as much as we can for now. We'll reach out, as much as possible, to the Ashikabi and Sekirei who inhabit our part of the city, to see if we can make alliances with them. I already set up a Twitter channel and a Global Homie group for Sekirei and Ashikabi as well as a few other social media groups that are all fed from one main Google+ Group. Nothing specific is given away in the group information so MBI shouldn't complain about violating secrecy but _hopefully_ new Ashikabi searching for information on the internet will find these social network groups and from there maybe we can communicate with them, even arrange to trade information or ally ourselves with them." Gregory waited to hear what his not-terribly-sociable Sekirei thought about that.

"Why would they help us? Would not any Sekirei we meet be more likely to just attack?" Madoka looked genuinely confused by his suggestion, which did not surprise Gregory at this point.

"Well, because some of them might be like you and I. People who would prefer to be able to just live in peace instead of worrying about when someone is going to jump down onto our heads and kill us. And I'm hoping that if we can get ahold of brand new Ashikabi and talk to them, give them a perspective other than the mantra their pretty new girlfriends are chanting in their ears, "Fight, Fight, Fight", maybe even more can be diverted from actively participating in MBI's insanity. Wouldn't it be nice if you didn't have to worry about the other Sekirei?"

Madoka thought about that, looking out at the now nighttime view of Ginza and downtown. The bright projections and holographics from the commercial district made colorful illuminations across her face, which Gregory could not help but smile at as he looked at her.

"I suppose it would be nice. Do you think we could really deviate from the Sekirei Plan like that and not draw even more trouble down on ourselves, Gregory-kun?" Madoka turned to face him, her head tilted the way she did when she was curious about something.

Gregory replied, "Hopefully so. We don't know exactly what MBI has in place to make sure everyone participates in the Sekirei Plan and follows the rules. We don't know how effective their oversight is either. Do they see everything? And can they enforce anything they wish? Those are two separate issues MBI has to address: their intelligence and their effective ability to project force. If they don't know what's going on, then all the force in the world won't help them. If they can't force others to their will then all the awareness in the world won't help them either. We just don't know how effective either of those elements are. We can only hope that one, or both, of those aspects are limited."

Gregory lit another cigarette and took a deep drag of the smoke, then continued, "Because if MBI is both all-knowing and all-powerful, we're pretty much screwed."

o.0.O.0.o

o.0.O.0.o

Monday morning, after two _very_ comfortable nights at the Four Seasons, Gregory and Madoka made their way to the desk clerk to check out and pay their room service bill as well as the room bill. Gregory gestured to Madoka to go ahead and pay with the MBI card. He noticed a distinct frown crinkle her brow as she moved up to the clerk and asked for their bill.

Madoka was quiet in the Jeep as Gregory navigated the downtown traffic, making his way towards NR20, the big freeway that would take them all the way home to Shibuya Ward, in the west. Once he merged with the fast flowing traffic on the 10-lane elevated westbound NR20 Gregory turned down the music and asked Madoka, "Can you tell me what made you unhappy back there?"

He saw Madoka turn in her seat a bit to face him more directly, out of the corner of his eye. Her answer was about what he expected. "What do you mean, Gregory-kun?"

He grinned and glanced over at Madoka before returning his attention to the freeway traffic. "I mean, when I indicated for you to use the MBI card to pay the hotel bill and the room service bill. It irritated you and afterwards you were still irritated. Can you tell me what it was about it that got under your skin?"

Gregory had a good idea what it was, and if he was right, he wanted to nip it in the bud, firmly and decisively. This was going to be hard enough without counterproductive cultural crap making them operate at a handicap.

Madoka still had not answered, so Gregory added, "Mado-chan, I really do want to hear exactly what it was that irritated you. No matter if it was something I did, something you felt was wrong, something that you're worried how I will take. I promise I won't get angry about it, I just want to talk about whatever it was and see if we can fix it."

In his peripheral vision, he could see she turned her head and looked out the passenger side window. It reminded him of the night she became his Sekirei; her looking out the passenger window and talking about things she found difficult, he only able to see her face in the reflection of the glass.

After a few more minutes, in which Gregory said nothing, letting her gather her thoughts, Madoka mumbled, "I do not know. I thought you would pay, is not that the way things are supposed to be? The guy pays for the dinners and the stuff? Why make me pay?"

Gregory nodded and inwardly congratulated himself on guessing correctly. Fortunately, he already had some of this discussion planned, in case it came up. And, given the conservative nature of Japanese society and gender roles in that society he had been pretty sure it would, indeed, come up.

"I can understand that, Mado-chan. In normal circumstances and if I were in your shoes, I too would probably have found that irritating."

She turned to look at him, probably surprised at his agreement. "Then why…" she started, but let the question fall, incomplete. Feeling better about their bond or not, she was still reluctant to outright challenge him. A trait that was at the top of his list of "things to work on with Madoka".

"Primarily because it wasn't you paying, Mado-chan. It felt that way to you because you are holding the MBI Platinum Card and it was issued to you. But you aren't the one paying the bill, MBI is. Did they tell you why they are giving all the participants such unlimited cards?"

She took a moment before answering, "So the Sekirei and their Ashikabi could focus on participating in the Plan instead of working. But you are working anyway!"

Gregory smiled, still watching the traffic as he drove, "True, I am. But my salary is going to paying the rent on my family's apartment, paying the expenses of having this Jeep, the things I was already paying for. And even if I were just setting aside all of my salary in savings and we were using the MBI card to pay for everything we possibly could, why would that be a bad thing? It's not _our_ MBI card or _your_ MBI card. It's MBI's card, _they_ get the bill for everything we put on it and neither you or I have to pay them back for any of it."

He could tell this wasn't reaching her past the conservative conditioning she'd been raised with. He tried again. "The MBI card is a resource we have available to us. Us. You and me. Ashikabi and Sekirei. Not 'you', Madoka. But 'we', the two of us. Much like 'we' have this Jeep to get us around the city when we need to drive somewhere. These things are our resources, our assets. We would be foolish to not utilize every resource we have, to the very best of our ability, using it to further our goals, use it as part of our strategy, and include it when planning tactics for overcoming obstacles. Even obstacles as mundane as 'where shall we sleep' and 'what will we eat'. Take a moment and think very carefully about this question before you answer. Is your feeling of being taken advantage of by me because of the MBI card helping us in our goals or hurting us in our goals?"

Gregory waited again, patiently. Years ago, he had found it impossible to just sit and wait for an answer when a younger Karen and a younger he would get into discussions about difficult items. He had learned through fire and blood to give a woman the time she needed to formulate her answers.

Well, maybe not fire and blood. But it sure seemed like it, in retrospect.

"I… I never thought of it that way, Gregory-kun. I guess you're right, it is just… I suppose I did not think things through very clearly. The irritation was a reaction instead of something I thought of. I am sorry." She sounded honestly contrite, which Gregory did not truly want. Feeling bad or shamed would not help.

"No reason to be sorry, Mado-chan. No, really, there isn't. You nailed it right on the head, you reacted instead of behaving in a way that you had previously thought through and decided on. The source of your feeling is that you were told, probably not directly, but you were still told, by someone you believed, that a guy spending money on a girl is one of the ways he proves he cares for her. He insists on providing for her, it's the 'manly' thing to do."

Gregory grinned sardonically and shook his head, then continued, "That's all just bullshit, Mado. It's all just stupid, self-defeating, games that people made up for making drama, with rules for 'this is how guys behave' and 'this is how girls behave'. Girls shouldn't have sex because then they are 'easy', guys should always pay for dinner otherwise they are 'cheap'. More human misery has been caused by these idiotic unwritten rules…"

Gregory kept to himself that 90% of these drama producing, judgmental, behavior-shaming, "rules" were developed by and enforced by the _women_ in almost every culture since Babylon. He didn't think that bit of information would help the current conversation.

Gregory sighed, and then said, "Usually when people react on the spur of the moment they are going to behave according to the cultural traditions and mores they learned growing up. When they were learning what is right and what is wrong, learning what behavior was approved and what was not. As a Sekirei, you didn't get the same sort of _deliberate_ teaching of Japanese cultural behavior a typical Japanese child would get, but you still caught all the same idiotic cultural gender rules present in this country. All of the adults around you, as you were growing up, they were making the rules for what was acceptable behavior and what was not, and they deliberately or incidentally were communicating to you _their_ feelings about proper and improper behavior. You, and probably all the rest of the Sekirei, noticed those things. You had little choice but to notice them, since they were your only clues about how to behave."

"And you think the things we learned were wrong, Gregory-kun?"

He shrugged and replied, "Not in all situations, but a lot of the unwritten rules about gender roles and what is expected behavior for males and expected behavior for females, can be counterproductive, hurtful, and self-limiting. Especially in Japan and much of the rest of the East. The West certainly has its flaws in this regard as well, but women's roles in Japanese culture are particularly… conservative. Hell, just the Japanese fetishization about female virginity alone illustrates the second class status of women…"

Gregory glanced over at Madoka then returned his eyes to the traffic. "Consider this example. Just because someone, an authority figure of some sort, may have indicated to you that only the male scientists in the labs should be working a job and the females should all be properly home raising the children, that doesn't make it _right_. It just makes it that person's opinion. And if you never heard a different opinion, never heard a counterargument from an equally important authority figure, then that persons opinion about women in the workforce would become the rule in your head for how men and women should behave as regards working. You would, today, see a woman working and as a 'gut reaction' think of it as wrong, that she should be at home raising her children instead of working. It is not necessarily wrong, but it is not necessarily right either. Those rules that we write in our heads as we grow up, that we learn because someone in a position of authority told us 'this is right' or 'this is wrong' when we were children, those rules are very powerful. And that we rarely even remember the learning of these things makes them even more powerful, because we then come to think of them as "instinctive" reactions, right and wrong that is hardwired into us so it must be correct. They affect a great deal of our behavior, and often they affect our behavior in negative ways."

"Then how can I know what is right and wrong?" Madoka sounded frustrated. He could not really blame her for that. Someone telling you that you need to reevaluate all of your preconceived notions about behavior was a hard thing.

"Well, Mado-chan, for now, the best advice I can give you is to try to think things through and judge your behavior, and others, based on how practical the action in question is. Does it help us survive this insane Sekirei Plan? Or does it make things harder? In addition, if you want my personal opinion, I feel it is appropriate to evaluate actions based on how much harm or suffering will be caused by the actions in question. It is my belief that we all should act in ways that causes the least amount of harm to others, whenever it is practical. Or, you know, even when it might be impractical."

Gregory paused, frowning a bit, then concluded, "There's enough unhappiness in this world as it is. Adding to it is… well, adding to it _unnecessarily,_ is the only inarguable sin, in my opinion."

She thought about that for a few minutes. In fact, they were pulling off the NR20 freeway, at the Shibuya Ward exit, before she answered.

"So you would fight or hurt someone, but only when there is no other good options. You might steal from someone but only if it was the only way you could achieve your goals, not just because it was easier? And using the MBI card like we are is not hurting anyone?"

Gregory laughed, "Well, it might hurt Hiroto Minaka a little, but MBI is incredibly wealthy so it's a very small harm. And when it comes to MBI, they've already done great harm to you and to me and to all the other Ashikabi and Sekirei. They've got a lot of karma to pay back before I'd worry too much about how much harm we're doing to them."

"So, I should make sure to think things through before reacting, is what you are saying?"

Gregory nodded as they turned onto the main thoroughfare that led to the apartment. "Yes. Mado-chan, I want you to break free from the restrictions you were clad in by MBI and the people who raised you. Be your own free judge of right and wrong. Decide for yourself what behavior you find good and what you find bad. Don't restrict yourself and your view of the world based on the narrow-minded, conservative views of some crazy scientists at MBI. And don't just replace them with me, either; you are the one who decides what is right and what is wrong for you, not me, not Hiroto Minaka, not Sekirei 01. You."

He glanced over at her, a smile on his face. "Really, what I want? Most of all I just want you to be free, Mado-chan."

o.0.O.0.o

o.0.O.0.o

New Year's Eve. Tuesday night found Gregory and Madoka walking together among the visitors to the small Shoun-ji Temple, the nearest Buddhist temple to the apartment. They both wore beautiful new silk yukata, which MBI had so generously paid for earlier in the day.

Madoka was now getting into the spirit of having MBI paying for her and Gregory's entertainments. It was a fun game and the prizes were awesome! Five star hotels, luxurious silk yukata, New Year's Eve at the beautiful Shoun-ji Temple. She was ever so glad Gregory had pointed out how silly her reactions had been concerning the MBI card. They _could_ be sitting at the apartment tonight instead, as Gregory pointed out to her.

She led the way, MBI card in hand, to the Shibuya shopping district's best yukata and kimono store.

Gregory just laughed and went along.

It was good to hear him laugh. Before they'd gone shopping he'd had phone calls from both Mishi and from his son, Mark, who was still in the States. Both phone calls had been very difficult for Gregory, and frustrating for Madoka.

Listening to him let both Mishi and Mark yell at him and say many mean things about how he had supposedly treated Karen was almost impossible for Madoka to tolerate. But he had asked her to not interfere, so she didn't.

As soon as she could distract him with plans for New Year's Eve, she did so.

Now the two of them walked, side by side, along the lovely pathways surrounding the Shoun-ji Temple. Their yukata were warm enough for the chilly weather, since there was little wind. Gregory frequently stopped and took photos, more than a few of them featured his beautiful, silk-garbed, Sekirei.

As midnight grew close, Madoka dragged Gregory to the temple itself, where shrine-maidens, in their traditional wide sleeved garb, drew fortunes for the visitors for a small donation. She and Gregory also took the time to write their private wishes for the upcoming year onto rice paper and tie the wishes to the tree branches of the shrine. Branches that were already bearing hundreds and hundreds of small, meticulously rolled, scrolls containing the New Year's wishes of those who came through earlier.

Madoka finished writing her wish to find and save her friend Yosuga from any evil Ashikabi, then tied it to a branch with the small silken cord provided by the shrine maidens. She waited for Gregory, who seemed lost in thought before he finally wrote his wish on his paper then tied it to the tree. They both stood as the traditional 108 bells rang in the New Year at midnight.

Gregory smiled and said, "Hmm. 108 bells. That's quite the coincidence, isn't it, Mado-chan?"

Madoka could only nod, amazed. "Why is it 108 bells? What does it mean?"

Gregory grinned at her as he answered, "They represent the 108 sins of Buddhist belief. Really, it's more specific than that, it's the 108 earthly temptations of the flesh which in Buddhist belief a person has to resist for their own good."

The grin changing to a leer on his face was unmistakable.

Madoka slapped Gregory on the arm and yelped, "Aw! That is not right! The Sekirei are not sins or temptations of the flesh! No laughing! That is not funny!"

Gregory just laughed in spite of her and put an arm around her to give a one-armed hug.

As the two walked back towards the commuter train stop which would take them the short distance back to the apartment, Madoka slipped her hand into Gregory's and the two of them continued, hand in hand.

"What did you wish, Gregory-kun?" She looked up at her tall Ashikabi, smiling happily. It had been a difficult day but it had ended almost perfectly. Just the two of them, hand in hand, walking in this beautiful garden in this beautiful city.

"Well now," Gregory replied, smiling slightly and keeping his eyes ahead, "if I tell you it won't come true, Mado-chan. It's a secret."

"No fair. Come on!"

Gregory laughed, and then looked down at her with a fond expression on his face. He squeezed her hand and said, "Okay, I'll tell you. Someday. I promise. But not now. For now it's a secret."

Madoka narrowed her eyes but accepted his answer, for now. She leaned her head against Gregory's arm as they walked and she could not remember ever being so content.

o.0.O.0.o

Tied to the shrine tree among the thousand other wishes, one was written in English. It was one line, written in a firm hand.

"May my beautiful little bird find happiness."

o.0.O.0.o

o.0.O.0.o

**The End of Book Two**

* * *

From the Notebooks of Gregory O'Donnell

**_The Sekirei Plan_ **

From what Hiroto Minaka informed me during our brief videoconference after winging Madoka, and from what Madoka herself has been able to tell me based on what briefings she was part of, and what she was able to overhear during the last years in the MBI Sekirei Labs, this is what we know about the Sekirei Plan.

It was not revealed to the Sekirei (at least Group 11) until they were already at a teenage level of development.

Originally the First Five cooperated with Hiroto Minaka and company as part of the "S Plan" (as distinct from the "Sekirei Plan" but we don't know what the "S Plan" was). As Minaka's intentions either changed or were revealed, as the "S Plan" changed into the "Sekirei Plan", his goals became unacceptable to several of the First Five and all but 04 Karasuba abandoned Minaka and the remaining 103 Sekirei.

What part 01 had in this is unknown entirely. Only rumor and myth speak of this figure, at least for the Group 11 Sekirei.

The remaining 103 Sekirei were raised by MBI and conditioned to participate in Minaka's "Sekirei Plan". How much conditioning was necessary is unknown, as the nature of the Sekirei is unknown. We do know it would take a great deal of effort to condition 103 random human children for the same purpose.

The Sekirei are to be released into Shin Tokyo, Japan, and are under orders to not leave the city, ever. They are released 3 to 5 per week, starting at the beginning of December, 2019. This would mean all would be released by April, 2020.

They are to find their Ashikabi and bond to him.

They are then to seek out the other winged Sekirei and engage them in formalized combat, or duels. The rules for such duels are strongly impressed on the Sekirei. They are:

The Sekirei both announce number and name.

They fight each other until one is damaged so badly their Sekirei Crest disappears from their body or until one gains enough of an upper hand to place their fingers on the opponents Crest and recite the victors Norito. This causes the defeateds Sekirei Crest to disappear as well.

As a 'terminated' Sekirei is completely unable to function, the victor is to stand guard over the defeated until MBI arrives to recover the body.

All bodies of the Sekirei are intended to be recovered by MBI and returned to MBI's facilities.

Sekirei attacking humans or Ashikabi is not permitted. Allowances may be made for collateral, incidental, damage, but the Sekirei are expected to make all reasonable effort to avoid harming bystander humans and are expected to make more than merely reasonable efforts to avoid harming opposing Sekirei's Ashikabi.

Once 90% of the Sekirei are 'winged', MBI is (somehow) going to close the city by force, blocking all traffic in and out of the city for the Sekirei and the Ashikabi, searching every vehicle individually via hand held sensors. (Note: Madoka overheard this description of the "Second Phase" of the Sekirei Plan and the hand held sensors from two careless lab techs a few months before the First Phase began).

What enforcement mechanism MBI has in place to insure the rules of the 'game' are followed is unknown. Madoka says she regularly saw security personnel in military type clothing and bearing assault rifles, as well as what might have been Armored Personnel Carriers, with MBI logos. How many, how well armed, how well trained, is unknown.

Also unknown is what extent MBI's intelligence apparatus functions. It is assumed, by the Sekirei themselves and strongly confirmed by the rules as they were explained, that immediately on the termination of a Sekirei that MBI is aware of this fact. This reveals several disturbing facts about the reach of MBI's awareness. To what degree is MBI aware of the location of each Sekirei? Through what mechanism are they aware? The "Second Phase" plan to stop all vehicular traffic (see below) and search car by car with hand held sensors for any hidden Sekirei would indicate a distinct _limit_ on MBI's awareness of the location of all the Sekirei. However, the expectation that the _moment_ they are terminated in a duel that MBI forces would be dispatched to the _exact_ _location_ of the fallen Sekirei indicates a completely contradictory level of awareness.

We can assume there are additional "Phases" after this "Second Phase". Perhaps the Third Phase would be triggered once 100% of the Sekirei remaining are winged, for instance.

The fact that MBI intends to seize governmental control of Shin Tokyo and engage in martial law control of the capital of Japan is mind-boggling.

How they can expect to get away with such behavior without profound ramifications is utterly beyond me.

Secondly, why would they do this? The Sekirei have already been informed, in the First Phase, they are not allowed to leave the city. The Ashikabi they find for themselves during the First Phase are informed of this as well. Does MBI not have any way to insure the First Phase Sekirei and Ashikabi remain in the city? If not, how can they expect this rule to be followed? If they do have ways to insure this rule is followed in the First Phase, what is the point of seizing control of the city and engaging in illegal martial law, blocking all traffic in and out of the city with, one assumes, vehicular searches and such? Other than drawing the immediate attention of every government of every nation on the planet, for what possible reason would MBI perform such a heavy-handed act?

Surely MBI's Second Phase Plan isn't intended to isolate news and information originating in Shin Tokyo from the rest of the world, some sort of attempt to keep the Sekirei and the Sekirei Plan contained while the Sekirei duel to the death in the streets over the course of, what, weeks? Months? Surely not. With 19 million people in Shin Tokyo and every one of them has a camera phone? With internet access from dozens of services, not to mention satellite communications? No, that would be laughably naïve. You couldn't informationally isolate Kandahar, Afghanistan, these days with such methods, much less try to do so with Shin Tokyo, the technological and information services capital of the entire planet.

The rules of combat themselves are ridiculously formal. It is obvious whoever came up with this is guilty of romanticizing conflict and battle. The delusions of the administrators, assuming that, for example, one Ashikabi would not kill another Ashikabi in order to prevent the loss of their Sekirei in combat, reveals a worrisome level of naiveté on the part of whoever is controlling this multi-trillion yen international megacorp and directing its resources to enforce this "Sekirei Plan". If another Sekirei were about to terminate Madoka I would not hesitate even a second before putting a bullet into the head of the enemy Sekirei's Ashikabi, for example.

That MBI's briefings to the Sekirei and the Ashikabi themselves do not even _mention_ this sort of scenario smacks of incredible naiveté.

The goal of the Plan, that the winner, the sole remaining Sekirei and her/his Ashikabi, will win the "right to ascend" and the "higher sky above" is so vague a goal or prize that it is amazing MBI was able to condition the Sekirei to participate. The proposition that one must engage in the genocide of every other member of one's race in order to win an undefined "right to ascend" is just startlingly ridiculous. Yet Madoka shows every sign of believing in the Sekirei Plan and believing in "the Professor", as is likely for all the Sekirei. Years and years of conditioning… what great effort MBI must have gone through just for that one purpose?

Obviously, any "plan" which features as its core the genocide of a race of intelligent beings is as evil as anything one could imagine. Any decent, moral, person would stand against MBI's "Sekirei Plan", and only the most venal and corrupt, or brainwashed, person would participate willingly.

o.0.O.0.o

o.0.O.0.o

* * *

Started Oct 14 2014  
Finished Oct 17 2014  
Final Edits May 16 2015  
Posted May 16 2015


End file.
